


Foundation's Hope

by kleos_aphthit0n



Category: Marvel, Marvel (Comics), Young Avengers
Genre: Alternate Universe - Foundation Series (Asimov), Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Alternate Universe - Space, F/M, M/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-15
Updated: 2016-04-02
Packaged: 2018-05-14 06:11:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 34,784
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5732281
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kleos_aphthit0n/pseuds/kleos_aphthit0n
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A Young Avengers scifi AU set in Isaac Asimov's Foundation Universe. No prior knowledge of the Asimov universe is necessary. (ON BREAK! FOCUSING ON ONCE UPON A DREAM AT THE MOMENT!)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A Pilot, a Historian, and a Politician

**Terminus**. Settled in 12068GE (-1FE) by the Encyclopedists during the decline of the first Galactic Empire, Terminus is the lone planet of the secluded star Y/AG-2 known colloquially as Cana for the queer red flecks that founding scientists detected on its yellow surface. It is situated on the utmost edge of the Galactic spiral, 8 parsecs from the closest inhabited planet Anacreon, and has a gravity of 1.06 standard Galactic G, comparable to…. As the Foundation’s ancestral home, Terminus attained galactic eminence not simply for its role in the establishment of the second Galactic Empire (1003FE) but also for great strides in scientific advancement during the thousand-year Interregnum between the two Empires and the fact of its unlikely survival past the early days of its settlement, when powerful warlords of neighboring planets coveted the defenseless fledgling world for its technological superiority. Of course, Stark's psychohistory protected and guided Terminus through… It was home to many historic figures whose valiant deeds, though much  exaggerated and mythologized, protected the Stark Plan and ensured the reformation of a second Galactic Empire. Among such illustrious names were: Salvor Hardin (17 - 103FE), Hobber Mallow (82 - 163FE), Bayta Darell (237 - 312FE),… , Theodan Altermann (499 - 562FE), Thomas Magni (501 - 563FE)… To this date, Terminus remains the seat of the Foundation and serves as the capital of the second Galactic Empire. It is currently under the leadership of Mayor Kathelynna Vishoppe (978FE - ), whose infamous ancestress had stolen the...

**Reproduced with permission from Encyclopedia Galactica, 116th Edition, Encyclopedia Galactica Publishing Company, Terminus, 1020 FE.**

**Encyclopedist’s notes: GE is a contraction of Galactic Era; FE is a contraction of Foundation Era; Trantorian prenonyms are…**

 

* * *

 

Professor Theodan Altermann leaned over the metal railing and almost died. 

It was only the pilot’s quick hand that saved him from what would have been an incredibly painful and unexciting end to what was just about to be the beginning of an exciting life. Fortunate too, not just for Teddy and his pilot friend, but also for the rest of humanity in all corners of space. For unbeknownst to either historian or pilot, Thomas Magni, fastest pilot of the Foundation Navy, had just saved the galaxy. 

“Whoa, there,” Tommy said with a scowl, dragging Teddy back by the elbow. His green eyes were pulled into a frown, glued to his holophone. Without looking up, he pointed sharply at the yellow line, which, in angry red letters, commanded: DO NOT CROSS.

There was something to be said about it, Teddy thought briefly in that split-second brush with death, that a man should be so intimately and irrevocably reacquainted with the ground on the very same day he was to part from it. That would have been the most ironic sort of death too—for one who would later become a Hero of the Foundation—the kind of death that would have passed unremarked except perhaps by his very few friends and the unfortunate janitor who would have to clean the mess the next day. 

“First time seeing a gravitic ship?”

“First time seeing _any_ ship,” Teddy said with an unabashed grin. “If we’re not counting holoscreens.”

The other man crossed his arms and made a face. Like something bad had just invaded his nostrils. “Well she’s a shit ship.”

“It’s the only other gravitic ship in the galaxy!” Teddy said, watching the black spacecraft emerge from the other side of the dome and descend vertically to the space dock. It didn’t kick up a wind in the unshielded gate where they were waiting and aside from a low almost imperceptible buzzing, the spaceport was quiet as the ship landed. “And they gave it to _us_.”

“ _Lent_ ,” Tommy said as he scratched his cheek absentmindedly. He clipped his holophone over his left wrist and turned to the ship with a look of pure disdain. “They _lent_ her to us. Ship’s still Foundation property. They’ve already lost one gravitic ship, you think they’d give the other one away?”

“I know,” Teddy said with unfazed enthusiasm. He rocked back and forth on his heels and rolled his eyes toward Tommy. “But for now during our quest, it’s _our_ ship.”

“It's a _mission_ , Altermann. Space, you’re a nerd!”

Tommy seemed antsy and irritable like he was looking for an excuse to fight but today, of all days, Teddy's glee was steadfast. So he ignored the jibe and snorted a dismissive laugh. “Do you think they’d let us name it?”

“She already has a name.”

“Oh. What is it?”

“Some stupid thing like _Vision_  or something. For this stupid mission.”

“I think it's appropriate. Considering the nature of this quest," Teddy said with wilful stubbornness. "Why are you even here if you think it’s stupid?”

Tommy’s shoulder’s slumped forward as he raised a hand. “Fastest pilot in the Federation,” he said in a defeated tone, in the same manner one would talk of a burst appendix. “Mission’s too important for any of the snails.”

“What now?”

“Snail. I think it’s some animal. Real big. That’s what we call slow flyers in the navy.”

"Ah, I see." Teddy smiled politely and turned back to the ship. He stood on his toes, careful not to breach the yellow line again as he craned his neck and watched four men disembark the _Vision_. A bit overdramatic but he liked it. It sounded… promising. He squinted to get a better view of their ship but from this elevation and angle, it only looked like an ellipse against the gray concrete ground, though its red-green-gold colors were ostentatiously Foundation.

“Come on, spaceman,” Tommy said, giving him a soft nudge to the rib. “Let’s load your shit on the air trolley.”

Unlike Teddy, whose entire twenty-four years of existence had been compressed into six suitcases, Tommy only had a small knapsack on him and a purse of what Teddy was sure was spice and Anacreonian candy. The pilot, though wiry and very short, easily lifted three of Teddy’s suitcases and deposited them on the air trolley without so much as a grunt.

“Space,” Tommy muttered. “How long do you think we’d be out there?”

Teddy shrugged. “Searching the galaxy for one specific spaceship, which is very possibly actively hiding from the Foundation? Very long. Plus, we don’t know which planets we’d end up in. Better to be prepared.”

“So you packed your whole house? We’ve got credit from Mayor Branno herself,” Tommy said as he pressed on the contact, activating the air trolley. “Foundation credit’s good anywhere.”

“ _Almost_ anywhere.”

“Ah. For that, we’ve got my little brother.”

The carpeted floor sloped gradually as they walked, and then turned to bare metal just in front of the liftube. Tommy stopped in front of a panel, flashed the holophone on his wrist against it, and quickly keyed in their departure code. There was a short hissing sound and a door opened seamlessly from the liftube and slid to one side.

“Here we go,” Tommy said as he let the air trolley enter first.

The liftube was made of smart-polycarbonate, running in a curved vertical descent along the arch of the spaceport’s dome. Many such liftubes connected the gates to the corresponding docks set up on the lower levels of the spaceport, but that night only their liftube was blinking. Teddy imagined how the port would look like in full operation: blinking platforms zooming up and down the tubes and ships lifting off or landing through the circular opening in the dome’s peak.

He made a step forward but Tommy stopped him with a hand to his chest. “Luggage first, Teddy,” he said with a patient shake of his head. “The tube scans for any illicit cargo. Trust me you don’t wanna be down there if it finds something.”

Teddy gave him a sidelong glance and quirked an eyebrow.

“Long story. Don’t ask,” Tommy grumbled. “It was just a tiny little thing back in the academy.”

Teddy nodded and rubbed his eyes.

The lighting in the spaceport was of that mellow off-white sort that usually made him sleepy. And it had done just that during the two hours that they had spent in the lounge, sitting in silence as Tommy watched that day’s race on his holophone and Teddy forced himself to read through a metastudy that the Galactic Historical Journal had published the previous night. It was a dry read, riddled with cliché aphorisms, overeager deductions, and heavy-handed exposition—no doubt written by a student for his professorship thesis—and it barely added anything to the field’s understanding of the Origin Question. Teddy might have dozed off a couple of times but as soon as the ‘Prepare for Boarding’ sign had lit up, he was on his feet and had all but flung himself to the dock one hundred feet below.

Because it was a ship. A freaking ship! It had taken him four years of rejection and disappointment and so much embarrassment in front of other historians, whose jobs inevitably required spaceflight. And now he was really looking at a spaceship—not through a holoscreen but a real life spaceship seen with his own two physical eyes that were lodged inside his very own skull that he could feel and touch with his own two physical hands. Great Stark, it’s a freaking _space_ ship. And he’s finally going to space!

Off Terminus and into space to look for a ship that practically the rest of the galaxy was looking for—quietly, of course, lest they incur the Foundation’s wrath—and would probably kill for.

The goofy grin on his face wavered slightly at that thought and his hand felt instinctively for the graphene chain around his neck. He could almost hear Mayor Branno’s parting words. _If you are ever in trouble, break it and I will come with the full force of the Foundation_ , she had said. Teddy shivered slightly at the implication: what he had around his neck was a warhorn.

“So,” Tommy said, breaking through Teddy’s thoughts. “Speaking of undesirable cargo. How’s Greg?”

Teddy felt his mood deflate at the mention of the name. He let a few seconds pass before he answered, watching the trolley descend through the tube and take an exit some distance from their dock. “He’s fine,” he said. “Greg’s always fine.”

“Woi prof’suh, iz tha’ discontent I hee-yuh in yuh voice?” Tommy asked, affecting the outrageous Trantorian accent from that spectacularly inaccurate historical documentary on Imperial Trantor that he had made Teddy watch because of a lost bet.

Teddy shoved his hands in his pockets and looked straight ahead, staring stubbornly at the smooth shiny finish of the liftube’s exterior.

“Oh shit, man! I’m sorry,” Tommy said with a laugh. “Damn. That bad?”

“Well… Actually… he hasn't done anything this time,” Teddy said after a moment of hesitation. He ducked his head and rubbed the back of his neck with a clammy hand. “I think I’m being too hard on him.”

A loud _ding_ from the liftube announced a satisfactory completion to the scan and interrupted whatever Tommy was about to say. With a whistling sound of expelled air, the seamless door separated from the liftube again and slid to one side, revealing a tall entrance into a hollow interior. Teddy poked his head through the opening and frowned when he saw that there was no platform, only a curved drop to the ground below.

“You know….” Tommy slowly said, as he stepped bravely into the tube, face puckered in deep thought. Thin filaments of light shot out of the liftube’s internal surface and connected with his skin, making him look like a puppet suspended in a complex network of strings. “I think you should dump him,” he said after some deliberation. He shifted slightly, and the strings moved with him. “And so does Kate.”

Greg was a sore topic for them and the mere mention of the guy was a sure prelude to a fight, one that always left a sour taste in Teddy's mouth and a guilty feeling in his stomach for snapping at someone who was only looking out for him. Teddy didn’t want the beginning of their quest to be an argument over his boyfriend so he made a dramatic roll of his eyes and carefully changed the subject. “You told Kate about Greg?”

“Hey man,” Tommy said, throwing up his hands in faux surrender. “I know you don’t like people butting in your life. But she asked because she’s concerned about you. Don’t make me choose between my best friend and my girlfriend.”

The invocation of the ‘best friend’ thing was a dirty trick that made Teddy want to groan; Tommy knew the right buttons to push, which was proof enough of the friendship that he was so deftly exploiting at that particular moment. “Oh, that is dirty and premeditated,” Teddy said, slowly shaking his head and jabbing a pointed finger between them as he gingerly stepped through the door and into the liftube.

“She did things, man,” Tommy continued with wide unseeing eyes as the door closed behind Teddy. “Things to make me talk.”

“Gross!” Teddy pushed at the other man’s shoulder and laughed.

There was a fleeting sensation of vertigo when the light filaments made contact with his skin, followed by a disconcerting weightlessness not unlike how he imagined zero-gravity would feel like. Then it passed and his body felt like it was on solid ground again. Of course, he was floating on air, somehow kept in suspension by the strings of light.

Another _ding_ and Teddy felt the hair on his head rise even though there was no wind rushing up or the accompanying feeling of downward acceleration one would normally expect when descending through a normal liftube; he wouldn’t even have known that they were already moving if he hadn’t looked at the docks through the transparent casing.

“Space, Altermann! How are you so strong?” Tommy said, rubbing his shoulder with a frown. His own ridiculous silver hair lifted around him, making a spectacle that almost made Teddy laugh.

“Books are heavy. You’d know that if you ever bothered to pick one.”

“Nerd.” Tommy snorted.

Teddy grinned and shrugged, turning away from Tommy as he stared out the transparent tube. There were planes of red light that flashed periodically through the axis of their bodies, no doubt scanning for anything that might be smuggled out of Terminus. They were descending rapidly now, probably at free-fall just by looking at the gates rushing up behind them. Yet except for the slight pull against the follicles on his head, it felt no different from standing on a stationary platform.

“Whoa,” Teddy whispered breathlessly.

“Yeah,” Tommy said with a smirk. “It’s new tech. Gravitic, like our ship.”

“I’ve never been in a liftube like this.”

“Gravitic engines are expensive and use very exotic materials," Tommy said as he glanced at his holophone again, no doubt waiting for a message from Kate. "Outside the military, only Terminus Spaceport has liftubes like this one. Give tourists something to talk about in their homeworlds, ya know? The Foundation likes to remind everyone who's on top.”

Teddy hummed in agreement as he turned back to the docks rapidly coming up to meet them. He ran a hand through his blond hair, briefly contemplating how uncanny it was that they were the only part of him that felt inertia. He wondered briefly at the physics involved: very advanced, involving a delicate balance of gravitational wells, dark energy, and the Higgs field to achieve fuel-free propulsion by exploiting the ambient energy fields that permeated the cosmos. There was more to it, he was sure, but most of it went far beyond what his dilettante mind understood.

“Do you think he foresaw all this?”, he asked Tommy, without looking away from the docks.

“He?”

“Stark,” Teddy said, and he could imagine the young man arching a white brow behind him.

“I doubt it,” Tommy said with an air of finality. “Psychohistory doesn’t work like that. It only gives—”

“—probabilistic predictions of the behavior of statistically large groups of people,” Teddy muttered automatically in that dictionary voice he used when reciting something out of rote memory. He turned around and rolled his eyes at his friend.

“ _General_ predictions,” Tommy added with a raised finger for emphasis. “Coupling mathematical models with sociology and psychology to extrapolate human behavior in response to social, economic, and political pressures.”

“Well done. Spoken like a true Foundationer.”

“A naturalized Foundationer,” Tommy corrected again as he tipped his head at the necklace around Teddy’s neck. “Why do you think the Mayor gave that to you and not to the pilot, as is protocol?”

“Oh. I didn't mean to—”

Tommy waved a dismissive hand. “Her problem. Anyway, Stark couldn’t have foreseen specific outcomes like the development of gravitics. Nor could he have accounted for individual outliers like that mutant. Psychohistory deals with large numbers and general predictions. Mostly of political or economic events, not technological. So his equations might have predicted the Anacreonian annexation or the Foundation Federation five hundred years later. But gravitics specifically? I doubt it.”

Those were the words, rarely ever varied, that every child of Terminus knew by heart. It was the great invisible hand of psychohistory that protected—that was _still_ protecting—the Foundation, from their precarious beginnings as a small group of scientists exiled to barren Terminus by Cleon II to their present prominence as a scientific hegemon whose technological superiority all but made them rulers of the galaxy either through outright federal annexation or through subtle economic control. Then a bunch of nerds (as Tommy liked to call them) on a tiny insignificant planet and now, half a millennium later, the Foundation was everywhere, its tendrils spreading slowly and patiently through the galaxy from its tiny but significant planet in its far-flung corner of space; they were well underway to becoming the capital of the second Galactic Empire just as ancient Trantor had been the first's. 

But it was more than history or even present status; it was, most crucially, also destiny. That was the Stark Plan: five hundred years ago, a Foundation had been planted on the very end of the galaxy to ensure that knowledge survived the decay and collapse of the first Galactic Empire; now it had become the only beacon of scientific advancement in the age of darkness and barbarism that gripped the galaxy; and five hundred more years into the future, the Foundation would emerge from its chrysalis and reestablish the second Galactic Empire—a better, freer, and, more stable Galactic Empire. All thanks to Stark and the predestination of his mathematical machinations that nobody now understood. Well, nobody except the Se—

Teddy pressed his hands against the tube as the _Vision_  finally came into view, sleek and saucer-shaped like any proper respectable spacecraft ought be and painted in unmistakable red-green-gold Foundation colors. He turned around and smirked at the look of awe on Tommy’s long face. In return, Tommy made a condescending noise in the back of his throat as he pushed Teddy aside to begrudgingly study the ship, making a loud show of his disinterest. 

The liftube reached the junction between the curved dome and the ground and made a sharp right-angle turn. Their gravitically propelled bodies followed the change in direction without any loss in velocity or any feeling of discomfort that one would have expected; indeed, the unnerving feeling of standing on fixed ground persisted. Only their hair indicated any change in inertia, no longer standing on end but now pressed flat against their heads as the tube spurred them forward. Overhead, the dome’s peak was already parting down the middle to clear the path for liftoff.

“Let’s wait outside the ship,” Tommy said as they stepped out of the liftube—having stopped with so instantaneous a deceleration that it would have killed them had their bodies not been gravitically shielded. Their hair, however, had not survived the trip and now pointed forward in sharp spikes. “He should be here soon.”

Teddy shrugged and turned to look at the gate, checking for anyone who was running for the liftube. They walked in comfortable silence for a few minutes, Teddy whistling with his hands in his pockets as he memorized the ship’s look—bulky, twice the area of his house, and with a prominent bulge in the center that made it look less like a saucer and more like an egg. He wasn't acquainted with many ships to know if these were unique features but the color scheme was sure to always mark it as theirs. Trailing a few steps behind him was Tommy, scrolling down on his holophone, distracted and already bored.

Then, Teddy looked up, saw that the dome’s peak had fully retracted, and almost stopped in his tracks. They were directly under the dome’s opened zenith and looking through the opening, it seemed as if an eye was glaring down at them.

One must understand that on Terminus, the sky was a black sheet; there were no stars or nebulae to gaze at except for the Lens—the foreshortened arm of the Milky Way which appeared as a thin gash of blue light with a slight central bulge—and the Diamonds, which only graced the sky in the first two weeks of winter when the planet’s elliptical orbit aligns the northern hemisphere with the star cluster of the nearby province of Anacreon. But from where they stood on the ground, the swell of the Lens was dead center through the dome’s circular opening, simulating the breathtaking effect of a reptilian eye observing. Indeed, if he would humor the historian’s poetic and self-indulgent nature, Teddy might say that the galaxy was watching them, waiting patiently as the Foundation’s glorious destiny unfolded during that millennium of galactic darkness. Because to a thing as old as the galaxy, what was a thousand years but a blink of its eye?

And now that eye stared at Teddy and it unnerved him, enough to wish for the familiar comfort of the empty sky of Terminus. Even among other planets in the Periphery, Terminus had a surpassingly unimpressive night sky, which seemed like it was no sky at all but an accurate representation of the vacuum and emptiness of space. Indeed, that was befitting of a scientifically inclined planet such as Terminus, which had no time for the romanticism that in older worlds seemed to be so endemic. _The Old Worlds..._  that was what those faded planets called themselves as over the centuries their pitiful dreaming of past glories slowly turned to contemptuous pomposity. Teddy felt sorry for them, he really did, even when these Old Worlders berated the Terminusi sky as empty and disappointing

The more sensitive of these tourists found his sky unsettling, terrifying even—to the point of philosophy and existentialism, sometimes—to be under a black starless sky and to be thus confronted by the true oblivion that was space, a maddening fact that was masked on their homeworlds by a shimmering canopy of starlight. But to Teddy, who was Terminus through and through, that fear was an alien one. To him, the night sky of Terminus was home and, for that simple inescapable fact, it was beautiful. Of course as a historian, he also knew that nostalgia cast a rosy light on memory, making special the unremarkable and romanticizing the mundane. It was a human failing when remembering the past, even in the science-hardened minds of the Foundationers of Terminus, the true heirs of the Stark Plan. And in his opinion, historians, ironically enough, had a greater capacity to nurture that tendency into pathology.

The sudden yearning for an empty sky made him think of his youth: his mother, most of all, who took him to the Flexner suburbs, where the air cars of Terminus City and its soaring spires didn’t clog the sky, and where the city lights were too far to blot out the faint glow of the Galactic Lens or even the fleeting sparkle of the Diamonds if they happened to be visible. He remembered the red gleam of her nails as she pointed at the Lens and made up stories for him. In particular of a space prince who used the Lens to find his way home. There was the bubbling sound of her laughter over his insistence that the prince would have fallen into the central black hole. The thought of her was a pang in his chest, so he looked away from the galaxy’s eye and turned back to Tommy.

“Nice weather tonight. No clouds,” he said, grappling for something with which to start a conversation. “Great for space travel, I guess?”

Tommy put away his phone like he somehow knew that Teddy needed an ear. “Terminus doesn’t permit any clouds over spaceports. Too dangerous for some of the older ships,” he said matter-of-factly.

“Oh,” Teddy said, slightly embarrassed. He didn’t understand how a ship could be hindered by something as insubstantial as a cloud cover when infrared radars have been in use even before ancient Trantor ruled the galaxy and certainly still after. “I didn’t know that.”

“And that’s why they pay me the big credits,” Tommy said with a grin. The sudden flash of grief must have lingered some on Teddy's face, because Tommy was obviously overcompensating. “A pilot, a historian, and a politician walk into a ship. That sounds like the beginning of your kind of joke.”

“Heh,” Teddy said with a smirk. “So. A pilot, a historian, and a politician walk into—"

“I’m here! I’m here!” A voice called out. “Wait for me!”

Teddy’s head snapped up at the panicked voice and glimpsed a figure in black darting from the liftube’s exit. The man was sprinting at breakneck speed as he wound his way down to the dock, his red coat flying behind him like a long cape. His two large duffel bags, which he carried himself instead of placing on the air trolley, swung heavily in his hands in the impressive couple of minutes that he ran toward them in a dead sprint.

Teddy took an instinctive step back as the young man unceremoniously threw his bags on the floorand came to a squeaking stop just a few feet from the ramp.

_Whoa, old school polymer shoes, who still wore those?_

“I am h-here,” the man huffed, doubled over in exertion. He looked up, panting, through his messy mop of black hair and stared at Teddy and Tommy. “I am so-sorry to have kept y-you waiting. Most impolite of m-me.”

He had that pompous Arcturusi accent that Teddy had come to associate with villains, traitors, and other miscellaneous Machiavellian archetypes of Terminusi films. Tommy had it too, during his first year on Terminus, but Teddy barely heard it in him now. Tommy had quickly learned that to avoid ridicule and to be taken seriously, he had to aspirate his h’s and soften his guttural r’s like any proper citizen of the Federation. But in this sweaty red-faced stranger, who bore a remarkable resemblance to Teddy’s best friend, there was no mistaking that he was of the Arcturus sector and it was obvious in his bearing that he did not feel the appropriate shame for his rural origins.

The idea was all very ridiculous, of course, and so embarrassingly provincial for a planet as purportedly enlightened as Terminus, home of the mighty Foundation.

Teddy chided himself for all these thoughts.

“Just on time, brother dear. You have just saved the universe from a terrible joke,” Tommy said, grinning still as he ran a hand through his shock-white hair. There was a slight shift in his accent now too, reverting a little to his native tongue. “Little brother, meet Professor Theodan Altermann of Terminus University, a historian of the Foundation and the only honest fellow this side of the galaxy. Professor Theodan Altermann, this is Ambassador Willeus Magni of the Congress of Free Worlds. You both know me—confidant and friend to you, Teddy, and to you, Ambassador Little Brother, role-model and inspiration. Pilot and captain to you both.” His green eyes narrowed, flitting between them quickly. “And an unassailable wall in between.”

Teddy extended a hand to the flustered young man and smiled inwardly, noting the subtle change in color in Ambassador Magni’s cheeks. “Pleasure’s all mine, Ambassador Willeus Magni. Don’t mind me, I’m used to your brother’s irreverent humor.”

“It is nice to meet you, Professor Theodan Altermann of Terminus,” Ambassador Magni said, clearing his throat as he straightened his back. He accepted Teddy’s offered palm and gave it a firm tug. Then, he turned back to Tommy and gave him a kiss on each cheek. “I greet you, _little brother_ ,” he said pointedly, with a tight-lipped smile. “I do so miss the months that you and I shared in a womb; I do not remember ever enjoying your company as much since.”

“Billy.” There was the spark of mischief in Tommy's eyes as he returned the gesture and kissed his brother on each cheek. He held the Ambasador Magni by the shoulders for a long moment and then wrapped his arms around the man in a tight hug. “I have missed you too. Just say the word, brother dear, and we shall reunite inside a woman once more,” Teddy heard him whisper to the ambassador’s ear.

“Space, Tommy!” Ambassador Magni said, violently detaching himself from his brother. “That is revolting!”

Tommy threw up his hands in surrender, laughing.

Teddy looked from one face to another and marveled at the similarity; it was like one of those chromo-invertive mirrors in visiting fairs in Cyclopedia Square. “I knew you’re brothers but I didn’t know you’re…” Teddy said, trailing off as he searched for the word in Galactic Standard. But such things being forbidden on Terminus and on Federation planets, he had none for it.

“Monozygotic?” Ambassador Magni said, who had brown eyes instead of green. He turned to Teddy with an indulgent smile.

“I was going to say ‘twins’,” Teddy said.

“An antiquated word! My, you truly are a historian, Professor Theodan Altermann of Terminus!”

“You know the term then?” Teddy asked, slightly impressed. And why not? He had only ever encountered the word from a colleague's analysis of a fossilized hard drive in the Galactic Museum on Comporellon—and typed out in Pre-Imperial script, no less! It detailed the unregulated mating practices of pre-Imperial Trantor, some one thousand years before advent of the Galactic Empire, which itself rose to power some seventeen thousand years ago. “Perhaps you have no need of a historian after all, ambassador.”

Teddy could already feel ambassador Magni’s formality seeping into his own speech. How interesting. He decided he would fight the impulse.

“Oh, I should think not, my dear historian. I am but a politician," Ambassador Magni said, almost shyly. "And before that, even more useless: a mathematician. History is a… past-time.” The Ambassador's lips curled into a grin, looking pleased with himself for that particular wordplay. “Besides, what we truly need is a mythicist to find this Janov Pelorat of the first gravitic ship. You would know him, I am sure, as I do not. I, myself, have no time to dwell on made-up tales and imagined planets.” A sudden look of horror crossed his face and he immediately bowed his head. “If you could pardon me saying so; I mean no disrespect to your field.”

“Oh, space,” Tommy muttered, turning his attention back to his holophone.

 _Stiff in speech and clothing,_ Teddy thought. _With a taut Arcuturusi accent and a quick wit. Must have been raised on Helicon, just like Stark himself._

“No offense taken at all, Ambasador Magni,” Teddy said magnanimously. And then hoping to sound smart before the other man, he added, “Though as a historian I must tell you that all History is an invented tale.”

“Oh?” Ambassador Magni asked with a look of sincere interest. “Invented by whom?”

“By victors, victims, and kings.”

“‘Kings’?”

“A lost word for ‘ruler’.”

“Indeed. Indeed,” Ambassador Magni said thoughtfully. And then suddenly, he drew himself up—which didn’t help much, since he was just as tall as Tommy—and took a step forward into Teddy’s space. He peered into Teddy’s eyes, deeper than what was appropriate for polite company, like he was trying to probe Teddy’s brain. Judging by the quick quirk on his lip, he must have found something there that both baffled and satisfied him. He made a quick nod and smiled again. “If it pleases you, call me Billy. Let us not be so rigid. If we are to scour the galaxy for a single missing ship, some measure of familiarity between us should make this tedious affair bearable, don’t you think, my dear Theodan?”

“Teddy. Call me, Teddy.”

“If you prefer, Teddy,” Billy said with the diplomat’s smile. “Let us be friends then, if such a thing could ever transpire between a Foundationer and a man of the Free Worlds.”

“We shall be the first,” Teddy grinned as he rubbed his palms together, deciding that he already liked the scrawny man. “Billy, my new friend, I believe you and I are about to embark on an excellent adventure."

“That’s nice,” Tommy said, with a look of strained tolerance on his face. “But first let’s embark for the ship.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I always seek to improve my writing so do leave a comment, good or bad. Your thoughts, dear reader, are always welcome.
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	2. Suspicious Things

Sweet little space prince, I'll give you a star  
That you could remember me if ever I'm far  
You can tuck my song in your little fist  
and kisses on your baby eyes and baby feet

Oh, oh, oh, think of me through sand and star  
Oh, oh, oh, even in wayward streets and city bars  
And if you can’t find your way to sleep  
Find me singing in a nebula, sweet little space prince 

 **Little Space Prince (502 F.E.) written and performed by Rosalynne Altermann. On _Lullabies for Teddy_ [holochip]**.  
**Recorded in Terminus City, Terminus: Vishoppe Recordings.**    
Reproduced with permission from the Altermann Estate.

 

* * *

  

“Settle in, folks,” Tommy said as he strapped himself in the pilot seat. “We’ll be spaceborne in just a sec—” His hand stiffened over a red contact, hovering readily, but his eyes were drawn to a wide blue glass panel mounted on the left side of the controls. “Well, well, well, well, well…” he said in a stereotypical Heliconian sing-song voice. “Branno, you old dog…”

Standing awkwardly some feet behind in the middle of the domed flight deck, Teddy watched as the pilot reached across the glass panel and pressed his hands against the gleaming surface. It rippled magnificently for a few seconds, like argentum, and then solidified into a metallic yellow patina.

“Welcome aboard, Captain Magni,” a disembodied voice boomed.

Teddy felt the ambassador stiffen suddenly at his side and his head whipped around to search for the source of the sound; it gave the uncanny impression of originating everywhere all at once, like the chorus of a surrounding crowd but with a single unified voice. Teddy decided that the acoustic amplifiers must have been incorporated in the walls to accomplish such an effect.

“I am _Vision_ ,” the voice went on in the antiquated accent of Imperial Trantor. A queer choice, Teddy remarked. “Second gravitic ship of the Foundation Navy, designation JARV-15…” A string of letters and numbers followed, all indecipherable to Teddy, and a systems check report, which listed out their stock inventory of food, water, oxygen, and even waste levels. He noted the conspicuous absence of fuel from the list.

Swivelling slowly in the captain’s chair, Tommy let out a low whistle. “Avenger class,” he whispered in awe, eyes bugged out as he stared at Teddy, who, of course, did not know what _Avenger Class_ meant. “ _Vision_ , what are the unique features of this ship?”

“Classified,” the ship responded with cool nonchalance.

“Override with credentials eight-shepherd-eight-speed,” Tommy said.

“Denied.”

Tommy groaned and turned back to frown at the yellow surface, tapping on it with an impatient forefinger that made hollow clicking sounds.

“Is something wrong, Tommy?” Billy asked. He walked over to the controls and, with a solemn look on his face, bent over the glittering array of multi-colored contacts to inspect the system for himself.

“I am not comfortable flying a ship that would keep secrets from me,” Tommy said curtly.

“Avenger-class capabilities are disabled and classified under omega protocol,” the Vision supplied.

Very unnerving, Teddy thought, since the comment had not been addressed to the ship.

But the response seemed to have satisfied Tommy. With a shrug he turned away from the metallized panel and back to the controls, keying in a command with a series of quick glancing taps on the array of blinking contacts.

“Would you like to initiate omega protocol, captain?” the Vision asked.

“Negative, prepare for lift off,” Tommy replied without breaking the smooth rhythmic motion of his hands.

It was an impressive sigh to behold, Teddy thought as he stalked closer and watched the pilot over his narrow shoulders. Tommy’s hands leapt from contact to contact in a rapid, decisive flow that could have only come with years of experience. The panel reacted to each touch with a loud beep, which was almost melodic given the remarkable speed of his hands. His fingers even spread out at some points, when he needed to touch multiple contacts simultaneously, hands flying from one area of the panel to the next in a furious but deliberate algorithm. The movement reminded Teddy of birds, mythic animals from the age of antiquity said to have been capable of unassisted flight, instinctive migratory behavior, and with some species even breathing fire. The way Tommy's short arms spread, crossed, retracted, and extended was almost like a dance or perhaps the purposeful gesturing of a music conductor.

A holographic screen pulled up to his right, filling quickly with equations, spatial projections, and strange geometric symbols that were scrolling up too quickly for Teddy to understand. Tommy only very occasionally glanced at it; from the quiet movement in his lips, he was more comfortable doing the calculations in his head while Billy, to his side, would often pause the screen and make minor corrections to the computer’s supplied calculations, prodding Tommy every now and then to inform him of the correction. At one point, the ambassador even rewrote an entire equation and the Vision reproduced a value that was higher by a few digits in the second decimal place.

“There, done,” Tommy said, abruptly raising his hands over his head and cracking his fingers. He stood from the chair and yawned. “Lift off in two minutes.” Billy twisted away from the holoscreen and leaned against the console with an equally bored look on his face.

“Um, Tommy,” Teddy managed to say, awestruck at the incredible display of mathematical prowess that the two men had just demonstrated. “Since when do you math?”

Billy’s eyes snapped up to him with a start, almost as if he had forgotten that Teddy was in the room with them. “It is nothing remarkable,” he said quickly, with a brilliant flush. “Heliconian education has a strong tradition in mathematics.”

“And piloting involves a ridiculous amount of manual calculations,” Tommy added. “It isn’t like a groundcar that you can control with three contacts and a steering wheel. Even aircars can be used intuitively without much input from the driver. But when you go to space…” Tommy shook his head slowly. “You need to consider the angular orientation of your ship in a convenient inertial frame, then there are local gravitational fields to take care of, and the relative motions of massive objects like stars, planets, even large asteroids near your trajectory because these things would distort the local g-fields or just outright crash into you. Of course, there are also curvatures in space-time that you need to keep in mind, astral flares, radio bursts from nearby neutron stars… So you have to plot and replot your path and the velocities that your ship would take at different points.”

“Can’t the computer do all that?”

Tommy scoffed. “For the most part yes,” he said derisively. “But it takes a lot of time for the algorithm to go through all contingencies and exigencies because the software has an unnecessarily high safety factor value to prevent things like colliding into a star or some stupid thing like that. And once we make the jump to hyperspace, we can’t rely on the computer anymore because there is an inevitable inaccuracy in the jump, which compounds for every successive jump that we make. I’ll have to manually compensate for that by winging it with the coordinates. It’s mostly eyeing the local star systems and then replotting the trajectory.”

“I see,” Teddy said even though he didn’t.

“I believe it is a form of human intuiting that computers cannot do without taking up too much time,” Billy supplied thoughtfully, sensing Teddy’s confusion. “And like Tommy said,” he went on, blushing shyly again. He was fidgeting and looked very uneasy under Teddy's scrutiny. “We are faster.”

“Surely not faster than a computer,” Teddy said with a diplomatic smile.

“Why not?” Tommy demanded hotly, glaring as if Teddy had just affronted his mother. “We know mathematical techniques that many Foundation mathematicians don't. And shortcuts that the Vision can’t take because of legal safety precautions.”

“That really builds my confidence in your piloting, Tommy,” Teddy said.

The silver-haired man grinned at him and winked. “We just know that we’re _better_ at math than the people who wrote the software for the ship. So we override their silly and sluggish arithmetic. You don’t want to float around for weeks while the computer does its calculations, do you? And besides, these folks are not space pilots; they don’t really _know_ what it’s like out there. They don’t understand the nit and grit of space travel as a pilot would.”

“I guess that makes sense,” Teddy said, still unsatisfied. "You'd know best."

“You know it, Altermann. Now, if you’d like to watch,” Tommy swiped his finger on a purple contact and the gray wall behind the control panel lost its opacity and became see-through.

Through it, Teddy could see the downward rush of the gray walls of the spaceport. In truth he had expected the loud roar of propulsion or, at the very least, a relentless whirring of engines to indicate liftoff but instead, it was as quiet as—no, even quieter than an aircar. True to its promise, the gravitic technology of the ship gave the sensation of immobility, like the ship was a fixed point and the universe itself was twisting and reorienting itself around it instead.

“Whoa,” he said again, remembering the gravitic liftubes.

“Yeah,” Tommy muttered, sounding distracted. He was already fishing out his holophone from his pants, no doubt to check for new messages from Kate. “Gravitic technology. What a mystery.”

“Actually,” Billy interjected excitedly. “The theory is rather ingenuous. The ship generates a gravitic field, inside which all mass bodies are accelerated equally and simultaneously, thereby giving a permanent sense of stasis. The gravitic effect also repels particles colliding into the field, up to the size of a small asteroid.” He brought his hands apart, spreading his arms. “So it has a rather convenient dual function of spatial propulsion and protection from high-speed particles stripping the hull at near light-speed travel.”

He turned from Tommy to Teddy with a lopsided grin. “If there _were_ such a thing as near light-speed travel,” he added quickly, a slight blush creeping up his face. “But with hyperspatial travel, luminal speeds are a superfluous technology.”

Teddy watched the man with some amusement, indulging in the condescending exercise of wondering how it was that an ambassador of the Congress of Free Worlds—a political animal, of all things—should possess such an immense faculty for mathematics and an undeniable passion for physics (and history too, he supposed). As an academic, he couldn’t suppress the lofty disappointment at seeing a mind with such potential and proclivity go to waste.

And then, behind Billy, the monotonous gray darkened abruptly into black, marking the ship’s passage through the dome’s opening and out of the spaceport. Teddy all but flung himself against the transparent wall, pressing his face against it as he strained to watch the city below. The wall was made of some kind of metal, if the painfully cold bite into his skin was anything to go by, but he was grinning like an idiot. His eyes took a slow sweeping view, from the absolute blackness of his planet’s sky to the burst of lights beneath him in Terminus City; it had a vibrant yellowish glow that seemed to radiate like a pulse, chasing them up the atmosphere and spilling like soft butter into the  sea. In the distance, the city lights outlined a sharp meniscus that marked out the horizon, where the planet’s curvature forced the rest of it away from Teddy’s view.

Some of the lights were crawling visibly on the planet’s skin—groundcars, he decided, trickling through the winding roads—while some others were blinking, almost twinkling in a kaleidoscopic burst of colors and luminosity. His was the city of lights. Brilliant, relentless, and insistent. Almost like stars, he thought. Teddy had to wonder if this was what other people saw when they looked up at their homeworld's skies, for those who lived on planets deeper inside the galactic nucleus. He wondered if other people felt the same awe he felt now, looking down on Terminus city, when they happened to look up and saw a galaxy awash with lights and nebulae instead of utter emptiness.

“Hey, Tommy,” he said with a grin, as the ship broke through the cloud cover and the planet’s surface disappeared again in a puff of gray. He pulled away from the glass-like wall and saw that his friend had already left the cockpit, leaving him alone with the ambassador.

“Just us, I guess,” he said, in a tone that he hoped was warm and genial.

But the other man didn’t seem to hear. Billy was sitting on the armrest of the captain’s chair, slouching most unambassador-like and eyes half-lidded as he stared out the window. His lips were pulled into a small smile, which cast a somber, melancholy look about him that, for some ineffable reason, made Teddy’s heart ache. Or perhaps not so ineffable; if he were to attempt to describe the look conjured on the other man’s face, he would say it was the look of someone peering into the past, the look of bittersweet remembrance of a thing now lost. Or perhaps Teddy was simply overreaching with his historian worldview again.

But whatever it was that Billy was feeling, it was clear that he was already elsewhere, thoughts scattered and skittering in a thousand directions, and Teddy was an unnecessary fact, whose presence in the cockpit had once again already been forgotten. That discourtesy, twice now displayed, should have wounded his delicate Terminusi sensibilities—or more precisely, the self-importance inculcated in him by his Foundation heritage. It should have, at the very least, ruffled him slightly. But instead, he shared an understanding as if he were a kindred spirit. And he felt that there was something intrusive in lingering further.

So he picked his way out of the deck quietly, leaving the ambassador to his ruminations in unprofaned solitude.

 

It only took a day for Teddy to realize that the Vision did not quite live up to the capacity for spaciousness that its exterior dimensions had promised. It was, in fact, very cramped, which made it a particular challenge to have a moment of privacy for any duration of time longer than a few minutes. It was this distinct circumstance that afforded him the misfortune of making certain observations about the twins that he wished he hadn’t the perspicacity to make.

The first obvious thing he noticed was innocent enough, expected even of good-natured siblings who got along sportingly. Tommy and Billy were always in the same corner of the same room; Teddy hardly ever saw one without the other—be it in the tiny galley where the twins crammed so they could take their meals together, in the flight deck whenever Tommy came by to readjust the numbers and Billy looked over his shoulders with eyes somehow both disinterested and judging, or even along the narrow connecting corridors. They did this even though they rarely ever talked to each other. They didn’t shower together, Teddy was quick to note much to his immeasurable relief, but any time one was in the lavatory, the other would be right outside, tapping away on his holophone or reading a brief or a report on a holoscreen.

All a little strange—codependent even—but nothing truly worrying.

But when Teddy began to look— _really look_ —he noticed that the usual proximity between the brothers would strain a metric ruler if they were not outright pressed against each other, which was most often the case. When not in actual physical contact, they seemed to move _around_ each other, as if they were gravitationally locked, arms and legs crossing over, under, or across each other whenever one had to reach for something or accomplish a task and the other was in his way.

More than that, there were plenty of strokes and caresses, exchanged very casually when they didn’t think Teddy was looking, and soft lingering touches that could be as subdued as a finger on an arm or as outrageous as a hand on a neck; three times he saw them holding hands and once, to his great horror, Tommy’s palm on Billy’s cheek even as Tommy was checking the inventory list with a bored expression.

Teddy wondered if siblings born outside the Foundation-controlled Federation all had the propensity for such alarming intimacy. It might just well be his own Foundation upbringing that made it queer to him, a very human inclination every historian should suppress, he reminded himself, especially when viewing lesser—no,  _different_ cultures; he was an outsider looking in, after all. Of course it could also just be a unique twin thing, a subconscious desire of two fractured things to merge back into what was meant to be their natural and intended form, an existential need rooted very deeply in psychological and physiological frameworks. It was an interesting idea, which he might share with his colleagues back in the University.

It reminded him of a thought experiment from his undergraduate days. Was incest _inherently_ wrong? One could perhaps justify his kneejerk nausea by claiming that inbreeding produces substandard progeny and ultimately weakens the gene pool (though the hypocrisy of this thought didn’t escape Teddy, whose own homosexual inclinations made zero contribution to the gene pool) but if, in theory, such unions did not result in such distortions, would it _still_ be immoral? As was the case, for example, in a homosexual incestuous pairing? Was incest then _inherently_ wrong, if we imagined the consequences divorced from the act? The question had been meant to confront the scandalized student with the fact that without constant introspection, his sense of morality would be doomed to be simple automatic emotional reactions that were not rationally defensible.

Of course this was all just an exercise of the mind, the idle musings of a bored academic, just meaningless abstraction on the gray ethics of Tommy’s theoretical incest with his twin brother. Though the issue of cheating on Kate wouldn’t be so gray. This was truly what bothered him, Teddy convinced himself, because the alternative was that he was a provincial bigot or, even worse, a historian who failed at the crucial prerequisite of cool scholarly disinterest; Kate was his friend and it was only human, he decided, that he would be vicariously outraged in her absence. So, _hmph_! There.

His suspicions were all but confirmed on the third day when he happened to overhear a particular conversation in the galley. He was on his way in for a late lunch, thinking the twins would have finished by then.

“Do you think he suspects?” a voice drifted out. Too worried and uncertain to be Tommy’s.

Teddy stopped reflexively by the open door, just out of their view. He would normally have left them to their privacy but for reasons totally one hundred percent for Kate, he stayed, pressing his back against the metal wall to hide himself from view.

“Impossible,” said another voice, with an irritated confidence that was unmistakably Tommy’s. It carried the kind of petulance that invariably implied, depending on context, either a ‘Space, are you dumb?’ or a ‘How fucking dare you?’. (According to Tommy, that second one contained a particularly vile profanity used in the more reprobate worlds.)

“Are you sure?”

“Positive.”

Teddy watched the mellow light spill out, careful to be on the look out for shadows on the corridor wall, in case the twins decided to come out..

“He almost caught us the other day but I think you handled it pretty well,” the ambassador admitted.

Tommy hummed in approval.

“But, Tommy, I am worried.”

“What worries you, little brother?” Tommy asked, voice softening with concern. “He will not discover us.”

“It worries me that we cannot know that to an acceptable degree of certainty.”

A pause. The words had been strangely phrased. “But I know _him_ ,” Tommy said tenderly. And if Teddy had to guess, there was a lot of touching going on right now.

“But we cannot be certain!” Billy whined. “This is unprecedented even for us, Tommy. He is in control here, not we. And with his connection to Trevize, he is not _that_ unlikely to figure it out." And then, in a distressed whisper he added, "And if the Foundation should discover us...”

The name struck Teddy and made his brows pull into a confused frown. Golan Trevize, a Councilman of the Foundation and the pilot of the missing gravitic ship. Surely they meant Janov Pelorat, the Far Star's other passenger and a mythicist like Teddy.

And so what if Teddy reported their... activities to the Foundation? There were no laws explicitly forbidding incest and even if that were the case, Billy was a dignitary; surely the customs of diplomacy would protect him and, through courtesy, his brother as well.

“Hush now, little brother; you are overloud.” Tommy's voice was even milder now, taking on an uncharacteristic softness that Teddy had never seen him exhibit. Even with Kate.

 _Yes_ , Kate, Teddy remembered, having almost forgotten his justification for lurking like a creep. Hypothetical incest and corollary cheating. Right.

“He is my friend, Billy,” Tommy went on. “A very dear friend. _Even if_ he finds us out, he would not endanger us. I trust him as I you.”

 _Space_ , Teddy thought grudgingly, all notions of righteous outrage vanishing in a puff of guilt; Tommy could still work him like a puppet and they weren't even in the same room.

“And I trust you,” Billy said in a tone that suggested some form of concession. “He and I did promise to be friends.”

Teddy heard a loud snort. "Friends. I see you, little brother. Do not pretend you have no further intentions."

"I see you too, little brother. We share the same designs for him."

Aaaaaand thatwas Teddy's cue. Whatever was happening with the twins, he knew he didn't want to get caught in between. Or in any other position. And at that, his alacritous mind conjured an image that raised the hair on his arms and made him shudder. 

So he took that as the perfect opportunity to step in and announce his arrival, lest further loitering corrupt his objectivity and allegiance to Kate. It was also, loathe though he was to admit, partly out of guilt-induced sentimentality from Tommy's maudlin declarations of friendship and trust.

“Good morning,” he said. He saw that they were indeed touching, leaning across the narrow table with all four hands in a tangled knot, so he made a show of rubbing his eyes and pretended not to have seen. He even threw in a full body yawn.

“Good morning,” Billy said, amiably enough, hands already withdrawn from his twin's.

“Space, Altermann, it’s way past noon,” Tommy said as he crumpled his lunch box and threw it in the chute by the door. “You just woke up?”

“Yeah,” Teddy lied. “Couldn’t really sleep.” That part was true enough. They had been hurtling through space for a few days now and Terminus had long diminished to an imperceptible dot behind them; the permanent darkness was wreaking havoc on his circadian rhythm, despite the Vision’s judicious attempts to calibrate lighting schedules to Terminus City’s timezone.

“Nervous about the jump, buddy?” Tommy asked with a sly grin.

Yes, the jump. He almost forgot. They were about to do it today. “Uh, yeah,” he said, grabbing at the opportunity Tommy had inadvertently given him. And then, just to be sure, he decided to go for an obvious display of empty bravado and added, “Sure, why not.”

The twins turned to look at each other and started laughing.

“Oh, my dear Teddy,” Billy said, wiping away the tears from the corner of his eyes. “There is nothing to be afraid of. I promise you will barely feel it. Would it help if I held your hand?”

The question came out of nowhere and hit him right in the gut. He was stunned for a while, staring at Billy in mild shock, and he felt the blood climb up his face in a pink blush. At least Billy hadn't said 'our hands'.

“Come on, spaceman,” Billy said, still teasing, grabbing Teddy’s hand and dragging him out the corridor and into the flight deck in all but a dozen strides. “I would not recommend eating on your first time. Many virgin travellers claim a feeling of being turned inside out during the jump.” He brought Teddy to the cockpit and there pressed the contact to turn the wall transparent again. He held on to Teddy’s hand.

Behind them, Tommy snorted as he took the captain’s chair. His hands made that flying sequence of taps again and the lights dimmed down. Behind them, a holographic projection lit up and when Teddy turned, he found himself staring at a three-dimensional cartograph of the galaxy.

“Vision,” Tommy said, standing up. “Run a holokinetic interaction software.”

“Running,” the ship answered immediately in that disembodied voice that came from everywhere at once.

Billy had explained to Teddy that there were no conventional speakers in the walls, as he had before suspected, but instead, the ship was equipped with a ventriloquist-like acoustic amplifier, which created the sound waves directly in the surrounding air molecules without a tympanic source.

“If I may remind you, captain, I am more than equipped to handle most operations. You need not worry yourself with the controls,” it added, and Teddy could almost detect a hint of resentment in its tone, as if it were taking offense with the fact that Tommy didn’t rely on it much.

“I like to work with my hands,” Tommy said absently. He stepped up to the holograph of the galaxy and flicked a hand, sending the image spinning in space. Then, he laid another hand on a passing arm and the image stopped, slowing down to a crawling rotation. He held his arms out, bent them at the elbows so that his fingers pointed to the flight deck’s dome ceiling, and the galaxy twisted in response until it was oriented such that they were looking at it in an overhead view. The way it moved resembled a writhing living thing like an amoeba or some older and more exotic organism.

“So,” Tommy said, turning back to them. “Just a recap. Here in blue is Terminus.”

A point in the outermost edge of one of the spiral arms glowed a bright blue and the rest of the galaxy faded into white.

“Homeworld of the Foundation,” Tommy went on. “And now, I’ll expand that to all planets and sectors that have joined the Foundation federation.” The blue spread quickly from the arm, covering about a quarter of the galaxy in a blue cloud, except for some very few bubbles of white. "As you can see, we are well into establishing a second Galactic Empire, probably even ahead of the Stark Plan's predictions by a few centuries, given we're only halfway through the thousand-year Interregnum.

“And in purple are planets and sectors that are outside the Foundation Federation but are under our economic control.” The bubbles all turned into a shade of purple markedly different from the blue and the edges of the blue cloud encroached further in purple exploratory tendrils, much like an afterglow or a bacterium with its seeking pili. Together, the blue cloud and its purple cloak covered almost up to a third of the galaxy.

“This is the Foundation’s sphere of influence. Now, the rest are planets and sectors that are either completely isolated from Foundation relations or are engaged in trade with us but not extensive enough that their economies have entwined with ours. A minority of these form the Congress of Free Worlds.” He paused for a while to make sure that his audience was listening, Teddy mostly. “Now of these foolish planets and sectors, the ones in red are the ones openly hostile to us. There, the name of the Foundation will no longer protect us. It might even make us active targets.” Nearly the rest of the galaxy turned a menacing crimson.

“So, mythicist Theodan Altermann,” Tommy said, fixing his bright green eyes on Teddy. “Where do we go first?”

“What?” Teddy said in surprise, blinking back and recovering from the spectacle of light that Tommy had just demonstrated.

“Where do we go first?” Tommy repeated. “Where do you suspect we could find the mythicist Janov Pelorat?”

“Oh,” he said, remembering his role in this quest. “Surely, you don’t expect me to know where he’s hiding just because we are both mythicists?”

Tommy shrugged.

“The Far Star was involved in an expedition headed by Pelorat,” Billy explained, releasing Teddy as he walked and stood next to Tommy; Teddy’s hand suddenly felt too empty. 

Behind them, the galaxy spun ploddingly, giving them an ethereal glow, like a pair of mythological creatures stepping out of a primordial galaxy. The effect was magnified by the fact that they were twins, mirroring each other in inverted colors. Teddy could imagine two opposing but complementary forces representing two extremes: silver and black... familiarity and novelty... life and death.

“The expedition was of an academic nature," Billy, the Black One, said. "He was working on an obscure topic, from what I have been told. Very fringe.”

“Oh yes,” Teddy said, shaking the clouds off his head. “It’s a hypothesis challenging the present paradigm of a conver—”

“You and Billy can nerd out later, Teddy,” Tommy said with an impatient wave of his hand. “If you were a mythicist looking into that and the Foundation, whose sole purpose of establishment five centuries ago was to preserve human knowledge before the collapse of the Galactic Empire, proved to be insufficient... where would would you go?”

“Trantor,” Teddy said without hesitation. "The throneworld of the old Empire.”

The twins turned to each other and shared a look, too brief for Teddy to decipher.

“Are you certain?” Billy asked, facing him again. “Trantor is beyond the Foundation’s sphere of influence. It is not a hostile planet but it is not part of the Congress of Free Worlds either so I haven’t much clout.”

The gravity of that statement was undermined somewhat by the fact that Billy was still in his pajamas, hair sticking out in wanton spikes; it was almost adorable.

“The ambassador is right,” Tommy said. “I thought we would exhaust our options inside the sphere of influence first, where the Foundation’s name would protect us.”

Teddy shook his head solemnly. “Trantor," he insisted. "Outside the Foundation, the University of Trantor Library is the only other place that would have a substantial collection of pre-Imperial historical records.”

“Pre-Imperial? Was that Pelorat's area of study?" Billy asked.

"Yes. Most myths are Imperial or pre-Imperial," Teddy said. "Though I suppose that in a few millennia, even the Interregnum would become somewhat mythologized. I mean even now, Salvor Hardin and the Darrell line have already been elevated to heroic status. And we're _still_ only halfway through the Interregnum."

"Focus, Altermann. How pre-Imperial are we talking about here?” Tommy asked.

“If I had the answer to that, I would be a very accomplished historian. And a wealthy one too, I suspect,” Teddy said. “It is part of our field's difficulty. We have no idea as to the exact timeframe but most of us put it to about -20000 G.E.”

“G.E.?”

“Galactic Era.”

“And in Foundation Era?”

“About -32000 F.E.”

“Space,” Tommy exclaimed. “Is the galaxy even that old?”

The question astonished Teddy and rendered him speechless for a moment. Next to Tommy, Billy turned slowly to his twin and curled his lip, creating an impressive look of disgust and disappointment in competing parts. Teddy had never witnessed such unadulterated disdain.

“I’m kidding, I’m kidding,” Tommy said with a roll of his eyes. He shoved his hands in his pockets and kicked at nothing on the carpeted floor.

“I am sure,” Billy said acerbically. He stalked back to the controls and pulled up the holoscreen. “We go to Trantor, then.”

“To Trantor,” Teddy echoed with confidence.

“To Trantor,” Tommy said in a defeated tone. He dragged his feet back to the captain’s chair and sighed.

Then, his hands began their swift dance across the controls to key in the commands. To his side, Billy was muttering equations and calculations, which the holoscreen reproduced automatically. Tommy seemed to need his help more this time, occasionally freezing with a palm over a contact and turning to check the screen or to consult with his brother. Billy would then bend down, lips scandalously close to Tommy’s ears, and mumble for a while as Tommy nodded and worked on the controls.

Teddy had spent the past few days reading up on spacefaring and he had learned that this was the traditional method of space piloting: minimal reliance on softwares for calculations. And by traditional, it meant Imperial Age traditional, which implied that the practice was at least three centuries old. From what he had read, the modern pilot relied on the ship’s navigational software to plot courses and execute jumps despite the protests of some critics that they were creating a spacefaring culture where pilots were at the complete mercy of their ships’ processing powers; they’d be stranded in case of a simple software malfunction or even worse, in the event of a bug, a calculation error, or a malicious hack.

It was a good thing then that Tommy had taken pains to learn the mathematics, Teddy decided now; perhaps that was why he was an exceptional pilot of the Foundation Navy after all.

“We are good to go,” Tommy said a few minutes later, hitting the last contact with a loud clap. He swivelled on his chair and directed Teddy back at the map of the galaxy.

“Terminus is here,” he said, and the galaxy turned white again, except for a shining blue dot on one of its arms. “And Trantor over here.” A red dot now, blinking near the galaxy’s central black hole.

“We are going to make seventeen jumps in total. Vision, please trace out the path we have outlined.” A dotted zigzagging parabola connected the two planets.

“Seventeen?” Teddy asked. His hands felt a little clammy and his throat was seizing up. “Why not just one?”

Tommy shook his head, his white hair falling over his ears. “There'd be planets and other massive bodies along the path if we do one big jump. The local distortions in gravitational fields would pull us off course and we’d miss Trantor by a huge margin when we exit hyperspace."

"B-but I thought it's a jump through hyperspace? Why would intervening bodies affect us while we're inside hyperspace?"

"We cannot really say that we're _inside_ hyperspace. That is a common misconception," Billy said. "It is difficult to accurately describe what hyperspace is. Some hypercosmologists even say that it is helpful to conceive of hyperspace as a condition rather than a place, because it is impossible to have a 'place' outside space-time. Although, intuitively, hyperspace does feel like a place.

"We have observed the effects of hyperspace on ships and its interactions with... let's say real space. And one of those observations is that ship trajectories in hyperspace are distorted by massive bodies in real space. We do not actually understand _why_ hyperspace behaves this way; we only know empirically that it does. Hyperspace works in mysterious ways, as the old adage goes."

"It’s for that same reason that we had to fly out of the Terminusi stellar system first instead of just jumping from the spaceport," Tommy added. "The local gravitational fields of Cana and Terminus would have messed up the jump. Seventeen is the minimum number of mini-jumps through mostly empty space that would take us to Trantor, accurately and safely.”

“ _Safely?_ ” Teddy squeaked.

“Tommy…” Billy said, eyebrows furrowing in clear disapproval.

Tommy turned to his twin and shrugged. “There’s always the chance of exiting a jump inside a planet’s crust, in the heart of a star or even within a blackhole’s event horizon. That chance is magnified when there are massive bodies in the jump path. Though, to be honest, I have never heard of such a thing happening before.”

Teddy felt his heart pound and his breath quicken. “I-I need to sit.”

A panel in the wall opened seamlessly and a chair slid out, positioning itself behind him. Teddy plopped down and felt the polymer give way under his weight, hugging him securely.

“You will be fine,” Billy murmured. He kneeled in front of Teddy and placed his hands on Teddy’s balled up fists, covering them with his own slender fingers. They felt rough but gave a grounding sense of tenderness. Teddy shifted his unfocused gaze and found himself staring at a pair of brown eyes, looking up at him under that maddening mess of black hair. Teddy had a stray thought to run his hand through it. “I guess I shall hold your hand after all, Teddy.” Billy smiled at him, a sight that did nothing for his racing heart.

 _Oh no_ , he thought uselessly at the dawning realization of what was happening. It was like being hit by a groundcar.

“Are we done there?” Tommy asked, watching the spectacle with a smirk on his smug face. He turned back to the controls and placed a hand over a contact. “Teddy, watch,” he said.

Thankful for the distraction, Teddy tore his eyes away from Billy and looked out the transparent hull. He saw mostly darkness except for the galactic Lens aligned at a slight diagonal along the wall’s horizontal axis. It looked much bigger than it did on Terminus and he could even see individual stars twinkling near the edges, beckoning them into this grand adventure.

Teddy swallowed and then cleared his throat. “Let’s do it,” he said, and Billy’s hands tightened around his.

“Here we go!” Tommy said excitedly and the view through the hull filled abruptly with blue, red, yellow, and white radial lines. There was no feeling of acceleration or a popping sound that Teddy had been imagining would mark their departure from real space and entry into hyperspace. Neither was there a dreadful feeling of being turned inside out as Billy had warned him. Then, a split-second later, the lines disappeared and they were back in real space.

"Huh," he said, blinking back in disappointment.

“Vision.” Tommy turned his chair and grinned at Teddy. “Let’s show Teddy the stars.”

“Yes, sir.”

Teddy gasped. Around him, the ship had winked out of existence, replaced instead by an explosion of light. Though he still felt the chair’s warm surface, his eyes told him he was floating in space and everywhere he turned were stars—golden, red, blue, white, and even green—scattered haphazardly into senseless beautiful chaos against the blackness of space that, before, had only ever felt like the maw of oblivion to Teddy. Now, it was a canvas, painted with the cacophony of stars, nebulae, and streaking asteroids. He craned his neck to look above, beneath, and around him because he needed to see _everything_. The stars were not evenly distributed as how he had decided they should be, but clustered instead in bright iridescent patches or spaced out irregularly into lonely pinpoint sparks. The space clouds were opalescent and, much like atmospheric clouds, varied in density; thick billowing swells stood proud like mighty immovable pillars that held up the very vault of space while wispy nebulae surrounded Teddy with shimmering gossamer.

He didn’t know how long he stayed like that, rapt and starstruck, but Billy’s hands never abandoned his. When he looked down, he saw those brown eyes, soft and half-lidded like that first night he'd caught them in the flight deck. But Billy didn’t look lugubrious or wistful this time—Teddy could see it; he was not wading through the murky depths of the past. Not this time.

Right now, he was right there with Teddy, fixed firmly in the present. And despite the infinite cosmic splendor that was surrounding them, Billy's eyes were on him like he was the most remarkable thing in the galaxy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh Teddy, you so silly with your naughty thoughts.  
> Ask me in a comment or on tumblr if you need to know! :)
> 
> I always seek to improve my writing so do leave a comment, good or bad. Your thoughts, dear reader, are always welcome.
> 
> Talk to me on Tumblr!  
> http://kleos-aphthit0n.tumblr.com


	3. The Answer to a Question Unasked

Mighty Trantor, proud and strong,

Whose bounteous teat gives suckle,

Beneath thy metal dress,

Through soaring spires, sky-saluting,

Thy fists defiant—o triumph of humanity!—

Reaching out through sand and space,

Ever-awful, forever-faithful,

Finger resting on each man-clasped star.

Mother Trantor, fierce and bright,

Immortal City, silver coin of man,

The thousand lights to which all stars bow,

Great End of roads, where waits man’s Home.

 

**Homer, 5 th century G.E.**

 

* * *

 

 _Trantor is a ruined planet_ , Teddy thought sadly. Even from space, he could see the desolation that had befallen the ancient capital; metal domes that had once encased its eight hundred sectors had been dug out and torn off—to export, no doubt—exposing its brown naked face for all who would mourn or sneer at its lost glory. Teddy had read that in the days before its fall, Trantor had seemed a coin in space, an ecumenopolis hidden under a metal skin, but now it was nothing more than a dull pockmarked rock, brown and green and thoroughly dead. One could never have guessed that it had once ruled the galaxy.

“So… that’s it?” Greg asked, glaring at the approaching planet through the transparent wall at the foot of Teddy’s bed. “You left Terminus for _that_ piece of junk?”

Teddy sighed as he turned off the holopad and placed the rod on his bedside table. “It’s the old throneworld, Greg,” he said, rubbing his eyes. “It ruled the whole galaxy for twelve thousand years. _The whole galaxy._ ” He grinned excitedly and spread out his arms. “Imagine that. The most powerful world that ever was.”

“Heh. I guess you’d like that, you nerd,” Greg said, turning back to Teddy with an indulgent smile. He was a handsome man, sculpted and very well built, characteristics all magnified by his half-naked state in the subdued light of Teddy’s room. “As long as you’re happy…” His smile grew softer and he reached for Teddy, finger just an inch from Teddy’s nose.

“Thanks,” Teddy said, rolling his eyes as he drew his knees to his chest and rested his elbows over them.

“But you know me.” Greg straightened his back and crossed his arms, padding back to the window on bare feet. “Look to the future, as I like to say. Speaking of…” He looked out the window, a frown forming on his smooth face as he turned away from Teddy and stared out into space. “How long until you’re back? I miss you.” In all those years, he had always been like that; he could never look Teddy in the eye when he said such soft things.

Yet despite all that and himself, Teddy couldn’t help but dissolve into a smile and bury his face in his arms. They’d been together for almost ten years now and Greg could still make him blush like a teenager. He looked up, once he had recovered, and chewed on his lip thoughtfully. “I don’t know. But we’re landing on Trantor soon.” They were still a few days out and Teddy was determined to spend the time in his room, where he could watch the galaxy in undisturbed privacy, recollect his notes on the Origin Question, and avoid Billy at all costs—prime reason for which standing right there in front of him.

"That's good," Greg said, turning back to face Teddy now that his moment of explicit affection was over.

“After that… I don’t know. The _Far Star_ could be anywhere. It might take a while.”

A flash of rage crossed Greg’s face but he quickly schooled it into something more neutral. “So there are things that even you don’t know!” he said, with a smile that was almost a smirk. Then, softening again, he looked around miserably and added, “You know… this place feels too big without you.”

“I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

Greg’s face brightened and twisted back to that smile that was almost a smirk. “Hey, listen. I gotta run. Call you again?”

Teddy felt his stomach drop. “So soon?”

“Kesslarr’s in town.” Greg shrugged one shoulder and gave him an apologetic look. “We’re gonna hit the city.”

“Wait. Kesslarr?” Teddy asked, wrinkling his nose as if something putrid had invaded the room. “As in _Jonn_ Kesslarr? You’re still friends with that brute?”

“Come on." Greg scowled. He was already picking up a shirt—the blue one that Teddy had bought for him just before he’d left. “He was your friend too.”

Teddy threw the blanket off him and swung his legs over the bed’s edge. “I’m looking to the future,” he said with a roll of his eyes as he sat up. “Well, have fun. I’ll view with you when I can.”

“You enjoy yourself too, Prof,” Greg replied with a grin, bending over to pull a sock on his left foot.

There was that burning look in his eye again, of a thing that he wanted to say but couldn’t. For fear or pride or shame, Teddy didn’t know. So instead of waiting, Teddy said it for him.

“Hey,” he began, as gently as he could. “I love you.”

Greg’s eyes dropped immediately, almost shyly, but there was a smile playing on his lips. Then, leaning forward, he planted a chaste kiss on Teddy’s forehead. “Yeah, same here,” he whispered.

Teddy closed his eyes and almost felt the touch of lips on his skin.

When he opened them again, the call had already ended and he was alone in his room again. He fell back to his bed with a sigh. Above him, the holoviewer’s projectors were withdrawing to the hidden compartments in the white ceiling.

Like all other rooms in the Vision, Teddy’s bedroom was compact and utilitarian. It was a tight square, with just enough space for his bed, a closet, and an oddly-sized table too big for the bedside yet too small to make a study. He could make a circuit in all but six strides but one of the walls, when turned transparent, gave him a view outside the ship and really that was all the space he needed.

“Lights off,” he said, and his room plunged into darkness. It would have been pitch-black, if not for the diffuse starlight and the faint light that reflected off Trantor; at the very least, it was comfortable enough that he could still make out general shapes in the room.

He sighed again, brought a hand to his face, and, legs still dangling off the bed, stared at the slow shadows playing on the smooth ceiling.

 

Some hours later, he woke up to the sound of a loud rapping on his door.

“Teddy, get up!” Tommy called from the other side, in a muffled but unmistakably irritated voice. “Customs check!”

Teddy grimaced at the sudden brightness that flooded the room. With a groan, he pushed himself up and winced at the pinprick numbness spreading through his legs.

“Are you all right, sir?” the Vision asked, just as a panel slid from the wall and a small lens protruded out. It emitted a flat beam of light, which scanned Teddy in a slow vertical sweep.

“I am,” he said, massaging his legs. “Just give me a minute.” Groaning, he rose to his feet and grabbed his green coat off the table, shrugging it on as he shuffled to the flight deck.

“—any goods to declare, captain?” the burly man in thick gray coat was asking Tommy. He had heard the doors sliding open and threw a preliminary look in Teddy's direction. With what might have been a roll of his eyes, he turned back to Tommy.

“Passport, please,” he demanded in the self-important tone of a low-level public servant. He didn’t bother to look at Teddy, satisfied that his outstretched hand would suffice for etiquette.

Teddy dug out his papers from the pockets of his coat and  handed them wordlessly to the customs officer.

“Officer Kinder,” Tommy said genially, pulling up a holo of the ship’s inventory. “Nothing but food and water in the cargo.”

Billy was standing beside him, clad in the semiformal silver shift of a galactic ambassador. A black rope was wrapped loosely around his slim waist and the crest of the Congress of Free Worlds—a four-pointed fractal star—was emblazoned in scarlet over his left breast. He leaned slightly to his left, peeking around the rather rotund Officer Kinder, and broke to a boyish grin, raising a hand to Teddy in greeting.

 _Someone should really do something about that hair,_ Teddy thought as he waved back, forgetting himself. Then, with a frown, he shook off the treacherous thought and walked over to stand beside Tommy, away from Billy.

“You will surrender the Anacreonian goods,” Officer Kinder said as he flicked through the inventory with a hawkish squint to his eyes. “You’re running low on fuel and high on waste. Purge it before you enter Trantorian space.”

Tommy’s eyelid twitched at the mention of Anacreonian goods, which probably referred to his candy. Forcing a smile he said, “Really? It’s just candy.”

“We do not permit goods from the Periphery,” the officer said. He waved away the cargo list and turned to the passports in his hands. Pursing his lips, he held out Billy’s diplomatic pass and added, “They will be returned to you upon emigration.”

The black passport was a solid polymer cube, which, upon the application of Billy’s thumb on its smooth surface, turned into a deep red and projected a holographic bust of his head. His name and appellation were printed out beneath the floating head—Ambassador Willeus Magni of Helicon—followed by the usual ‘Please allow the bearer of this passport to…’ Officer Kinder rotated the image a few times, carefully comparing it to Billy's head. Then, when he was finally satisfied, he pressed his own thumb on the passport with a brusque nod.

With Tommy and Teddy, he was more fastidious. He took his time meticulously inspecting their passports for signs of forgery and then he made them turn around a couple of times so that he could compare just about every cranial depression and protrusion with their holographs. He even went so far as to ask them their listed security questions—all ten of them. With growing irritation, Teddy began to suspect that the red-green-gold of their Terminusi passports had prompted the marked difference in treatment; he decided, quite reflexively, that a Foundationer should never be handled so roughly—like a common criminal, almost!—and by an inflated bureaucrat of a barbarian world, no less!

“Are we done here?” he asked, rather viciously that the twins both turned to him with scandalized eyes. He regretted it immediately, both the outburst and the thoughts that had elicited it, but the damage was already done.

Officer Kinder’s beady eyes flicked up from Teddy’s passport and bore into his face. “Just one more thing, Professor Altermann,” he said coolly. “We would require a full body scan.”

“A f-full body—what for?” Teddy bristled and felt heat creep up his neck, embarrassed now by his lack of self-control and the prospect of such dehumanizing treatment. To his side, the brothers had turned back to each other, convening once again in that uncanny nonverbal language unique to them.

“For illicit substances,” the officer said.

Teddy felt his blood grow cold. Illicit substances? It had been years since the incident and he had been a kid! And surely, _that_ would not be on his record; it was Greg who had—

“Officer,” Billy said, smiling warmly as he laid a hand on the man’s arm. “Would you speak with me for a moment?”

A conflicted frown crossed Officer Kinder’s face but he allowed the ambassador to guide him out the flight deck anyway.

“What in space was that, Teddy?” Tommy exclaimed once the door had closed behind them.

“I-I don’t,” Teddy muttered. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking”

Tommy heaved a deep exhale and ran his fingers through the locks of his white hair. He had a tired droop to his eyes. “What’s bothering you?” he asked with as much patience and softness as he could muster. “You've been acting weird. Don't think I didn't notice you holing up in your room for the past few days! Is this another Greg thing?”

“Wha—?”

“Come on, man, he's halfway across the galaxy! What did he do now? Because I swear, Teddy, if he hurt you again, I’d—”

“It’s not Greg,” Teddy said immediately and then, ashamed, added, “I-it’s me, okay? It’s all me. He has nothing to do with it.”

 _It's your brother too!_ he wanted to say.  _Your awkward, smart, unbearably_ attractive  _brother, throwing me off and making everything so confusing!_

Tommy leveled him a look, wary and tired. A lock of silver hair fell across his forehead and after a long silence he said, “The way you sneered at that Hamish fella… You reminded me so much of Greg.”

Teddy didn’t know how to respond to that. He was being torn apart; on one side was Tommy, who was all friendship and fierce protectiveness, while on the other was Greg, the great love of his life. Greg was not a good man, Teddy knew that to his core, but he was trying… space, he was trying so hard for Teddy—no _,_ for  _them_. Greg was trying very hard for  _them._ And here was Teddy, practically falling for a guy whom he had just met—just because he was nice to Teddy and had held his hand that one time.

Before he could give Tommy a response, the doors parted behind them and Billy entered, alone, with a proud grin on his face.

“I took care of it,” he declared happily. He handed them their passports and looked from one face to the next, smile slowly disappearing as he read the room. “Is everything all right?”

“It’s nothing. Just old friends bickering,” Tommy said, pinching Billy’s cheek. Already the twins were pressing against each other, now that Officer Kinder was gone. “I’m sorry, Teddy. It was unfair of me to pin it on Greg. You are both men of Terminus and I shouldn’t blame you for how the Foundation raised you.”

“I apologize as well,” Teddy said, ruing how the Heliconian was showing more grace than he, a Terminusi. _Great Stark, I did it again!_  How niftily did his thoughts prove Tommy’s point! "I'll try to be better."

Tommy, to his credit, simply shrugged and arched a silver brow. With a light punch to Teddy’s shoulder, he grinned and said, fondly and proudly, “Now there’s a true Foundationer.”

“Shall we break fast?” Billy interjected, looking much relieved by the return of congeniality between pilot and historian.

Teddy contemplated the offer but, despite the hopeful look on Billy’s face (or perhaps because of it), eventually decided to decline.

“I would love to,” he said, truthfully enough. “But I’m expecting a call.”

“Greg?” Tommy asked.

“Yeah.”

“How did he even get the ship’s hyperrelay number?”

Teddy shrugged and smiled. “It’s Greg.”

When he returned to his room, a message was already waiting for him. It opened with Greg in a state of complete inebriation and partial undress, his new shirt tucked out with a few buttons missing. His hair, usually so tyrannically groomed to the last micrometer, was in absolute anarchy—much like Billy’s, Teddy remarked absently before he could choke out the wayward thought—and there was the sure sign of a brawl blossoming purple around his left eye.

“Hey Tee,” he slurred. “You’re not here; I guess you’re off doing history things. Heh. My little nerd.”

Teddy smiled as he sat cross-legged on the floor. From that vantage point, he could pretend that Greg was looking right at him.

Greg placed a hand behind his neck and kicked at nothing on the floor. “I uh… got in a bit of a fight. No big deal. I know you’d be disappointed but it was totally Kesslarr’s fault. Called you a ‘mo so I socked him right in the jaw. Gotta defend my man’s honor, after all,” he said with a grin. “What else… Oh, and tomorrow we’re gonna see a stupid holofilm by some blackney.” He sneered as he said the slur, more aggrieved by the thought of watching a movie from another world than by the prospect of meeting Kesslarr again.

Greg went on for a while, recounting the night’s misadventures with Kesslarr… which bars they'd hit, which clubs, how many women had poured their drinks over Kesslarr’s head. Greg had dropped Kesslarr off at the hospital after breaking the homophobe's jaw, but not before they'd made plans for the next day. Teddy didn’t quite understand the dynamics of that relationship or, for that matter, any of Greg’s other volatile friendships and he had long since decided to simply chuck it in the "It's Greg" box, alongside the man's other mysteries.

“So… I guess that’s that,” Greg said after a long pause. He rubbed his eyes and yawned, stretching his arms over his head. “I miss you, man. Come home soon.” His face twisted into a pained expression, brows furrowing in a deep frown and thoughts turning inwards as he contemplated something that seemed to be of great consequence. From Teddy’s perspective on the floor, Greg’s gray eyes were boring straight into his. “I uh… I lo-… uh… Okay, bye.”

Teddy smiled to himself again as the message cut off and Greg’s image disappeared. He played it a couple more times before he climbed back in bed and went back to sleep.

 

Greg did not call again in the days thereafter, a disappointing but by no means especially extraordinary turn of events. By now, Teddy knew better than to wear himself with worry during one of Greg’s extended disappearances; yet even so, as the Vision penetrated Trantorian atmosphere and the planet’s brown surface rushed up to meet them, he found himself gnawing at his thumb and staring expectantly at the holophone. He held on to that scintilla of hope until the g-field dial progressed past the red zone and the green light of the hyperrelay finally turned off.

 

They made landfall on a small open-air spaceport in the center of a large fenced-in plot of land. The port could have held no more than five ships and the docks were dingy makeshift contraptions already flaking with rust. But it was right at the entrance to the Library so they had decided to make do. Teddy had expected tumbled spires, half-torn domes, and vast ruins entangled with wild flora but in truth, Trantor lacked the melancholy air that befitted its ruined glory; instead, the land inside the crude wooden barricade was barren and dusty while beyond the fence were low shambling structures that must be the domiciles of the planet’s farmers. Even in the distance, there were no further signs of man-made structures or even a proper skyline to speak of. Instead, there were only mountains and fields.

There was a momentary rush of lightheadedness as the air pressure inside the Vision slowly equilibrated with the Trantorian atmosphere. Once the levels had matched, a circular seam appeared along the flight deck's floor and the ramp descended vertically. Teddy excitedly rushed to edge, breathed in the scent of ancient Trantor, and promptly threw up.

A wild fit of laughter broke behind him and when he had emptied his stomach, he turned to glare at the red-faced source. “I knew it,” Tommy managed to say in between wheezes, arms wrapped around his middle as his whole frame shook with enthusiasm. Shaking with glee, he produced a small bottle of water from his pants and handed it to Teddy.

Billy looked similarly amused, though a little more sympathetic, trying his best to hide the smile pulling on his lips. “This is common.” He walked over and laid a soothing hand on Teddy’s back. “Every world is repugnant to a tourist.”

Teddy recoiled from the touch. “Surely, not my Terminus!” he retorted. He washed his mouth and spat off the edge.

"To those who hail from the gardens of Helicon, your planet is one of the worst," Billy said with a chuckle.

Teddy covered his nose and decided to breathe through his mouth. “Oh _space_ , I can taste it!”

“Here,” Billy said. He took Teddy’s hand and placed small yellow object on his palm. “It will help. I promise.”

“Anacreonian candy?” Teddy winced as he popped the sour drop in his mouth. “I thought we couldn’t bring these in?”

Billy ducked his head, as if he had just been caught in the midst of a crime, and tapped on the scarlet star on his chest. Right. Ambassador Willeus Magni. It was a four-pointed star, almost like a cross, and since it was a fractal star, if one had a microviewer, he would see that each vertex diverged into three more tips and, magnifying further still, each tip would diverge again into three. The process repeated itself _ad infinitum_ until there were four million tips, each representing a Free World. The symbolism was obvious: four million worlds, each in isolation invisible to the naked eye, coming together to forming the Congress of Free Worlds, which, as the large four-pointed star would suggest, was much greater than a mere sum of its parts.

“Yeah, okay. Thanks,” Teddy said curtly. He didn’t miss how the other man’s fingers had brushed against his own or how his treacherous heart quickened at the lingering touch; his head filled immediately with thoughts of Greg.

Fortunately, Billy took his bluntness in stride. He looked up through the curling fringe of his hair, smiled briefly, and turned away.

Their welcoming party was as disappointing as the first sight of the planet: a lone woman slouching just outside the spaceport, way past her prime just like her planet and wearing a warm and patient expression on her thin face. She was dressed in similar fashion as the ambassador: black shift, white rope for a belt, and the crest of ancient Trantor—the sun and spaceship—sewn over her left breast. But her bearing was all wrong. Hunchbacked, ignoble, and compressed. Unlike Billy, who, despite his stature, cut a handsome and stately figure.

“Welcome, travellers,” she said when they’d approached, spreading her bony arms. “I am Delora Delarmi of the Imperial Library.” She spoke with a slight accent that Teddy couldn't place for it was buried deep under a consciously learned Galactic Standard; it was obvious in the way she emphasized her 'r' and dragged certain vowels that it was not her native tongue.

Teddy did not know if he was expected to bow, offer a hand, or kiss her on each cheek as the twins had done on Terminus. Thankfully, Billy stepped forward and performed the greeting for them: a slender hand lifted forward, forefinger slightly raised. Delarmi mirrored the gesture and touched her forefinger on his. They held the position for a few seconds and then, cued by a signal invisible to Teddy, simultaneously let their hands drop.

“I am Ambassador Willeus Magni of the Congress of Free Worlds—” here, he spread his arms and tilted his head in a modest but dignified fashion “—and my party: Pilot Thomas Magni of Terminus and Professor Theodan Altermann, a historian of Terminus.” And his accent had changed too, slightly mirroring Delarmi's.

Teddy wondered briefly if that was part of the etiquette of diplomacy, to spare the inferior party from feelings of inadequacy.

The old woman's eyes flitted from Billy, to Tommy, and then to Teddy, where it rested for an inordinate amount of time. A slight frown creased her forehead, bringing a momentary sharpness to her blue eyes. “A Professor of Terminus?” Teddy could hear the exalted ‘P’ in her voice. “The Library is honored.”

“The honor is all mine, uh—sorry, how do I address you?”

“Delarmi is just fine, dear.”

“The honor is all mine, Delarmi. It has been my dream to visit Trantor even when I was still a student of history.”

The woman smiled at him not unlike how he imagined a grandmother would smile at the tall tale of a child.

“If you would not mind, hostess Delarmi, we have come a long way,” Billy said. “The Professor has work to do.”

“Of course, Ambassador Magni.” Delarmi smiled, graciously tipping her head in acquiescence. “Follow me.”

They began to walk and Teddy noted that some men and women had begun to gather behind the fence, all of them squat, bulky, and brown-faced regardless of sex and age. “As you can see, we are in an area sectioned off from the farms. Our scholars call it the airs and it’s legally Library territory. The farmers know and respect this but nonetheless I would not recommend venturing too close to the fence,” Delarmi said as she led them across the desolate land in a slow limping gait. Some farmers were pointing rather rudely at the strange visitors from beyond the stars but she paid them no attention. “Right there in the center of the clearing is the liftube to the Library.”

She gestured at the only other structure in the airs aside from the spaceport. It was a tall metal box about the size of a large wardrobe and seemed spacious enough to carry twenty people in a tight squeeze. “How long would you be staying?” she asked, pressing a contact once everyone had entered the tube.

“As long as the Professor requires,” Billy said.

The lift began to descend through the dank shaft, moving with sudden jerking drops that jostled them rather violently. Teddy would have yelped or pressed himself flat against a wall but nobody else seemed the least bit alarmed so he did his best to think of anything but the terror seizing his chest each time the lift dropped. Already he missed the gravitics of the Vision and the comforts of Terminus. Still, he offered a gallant arm to Delarmi to keep her from slipping and breaking a hip. He wasn't certain about the state of Trantor's medical facilities and he did not think it polite to ask.

“Thank you, dear,” she said, patting his forearm with her papery hand before turning back to Billy. “I regret to inform you, Ambassador, that Terminusi visas only last for thirty Trantorian days.”

“How long is a Trantorian day?”

“About 0.91 days, Galactic Standard.”

Billy looked over to Teddy and, very softly, asked, “Would that suffice?”

Teddy was thankful for the conversation; at least it distracted him from the near death experience that came with every lurch of the lift. He might have held Billy's hand again like he had on their first jump and that would have calmed him down. But the thought of it made him sick with guilt and his hands fisted on his sides instead, clammy and trembling and tight enough that his nails bit into skin. 

“That’s too short,” he said.

“That is too short,” Billy repeated, turning back to Delarmi, all softness dissipated.

The elderly woman gave the ambassador a sidelong look. “I don’t know how things work on Terminus, Ambassador Magni, but Trantor possesses no technology to change the length of its day.”

Tommy snorted at that, which earned him a glare from both Billy and Delarmi. “Sorry,” he muttered, looking suitably cowed.

“I would have word with your superior,” Billy said easily.

Delarmi smiled again. “Very well, Ambassador Magni.”

The lift trudged downwards interminably, protesting loudly as the rusted gears grated against each other. _Gears_. Space, it wasn’t even a diamagnetic lift.

Quite involuntarily, Teddy released a slow exhale through his lips.

“This is an old place, Professor,” Delarmi said _a propos_ of nothing. Her voice had taken a different timbre, shifting from the warmth of a grandmother to the bluntess of the crone.

Teddy’s arms prickled at the uncanny intrusion to his thoughts.

“A _sacred_  place, if you'd permit the archaism,” she went on. “Are you familiar with our history?”

Teddy swallowed before answering. “I know some of it from the Song of Streeling.”

Delarmi hummed in approval. “Of course. You are a scholar of the Past.”

“I try,” Teddy said.

“The Song is a dramatization but you know the story. Streeling is the only sector that had survived the Sack of Trantor. And now only our Library remains.” Her voice had softened again, filled suddenly with such longing that Teddy half-expected to find her eyes glistening with tears.

He nodded, putting on his Professor face. “The men of the sector defended it valiantly. The tale is well known throughout the galaxy, even among the outer worlds. I believe they still make films about it.”

The lift shuddered violently and began to rotate. “They were students,” Delarmi said, in a whispered croak.

“I’m sorry, what was that?”

“They weren’t _men_ ,” she spat out. “They were children. Boys and girls, the lot of them.”

“Oh.” Teddy tried to imagine it. Students of the University barricading themselves against Gilmer’s horde. A children’s crusade to protect the greatest repository of knowledge in the galaxy. He doubted the students of Terminus to be capable of such a feat, which was ironic since their scientist ancestors had made the same sacrifice to ensure the establishment and survival of the Foundation; he had to admit, there was something utterly romantic about it, and even a sense of poetry that the old capital should perish in the very same way that its heir should be born.

“Much has been sacrificed," Delarmi said. "Remember that as you peruse our books. And ever after still.”

The lift came to a final spectacular lurch that knocked everyone but the old woman to his knees. With another touch at the contact, the door slid to one side and revealed the cavernous interior of the famed Library, struck through with shafts of golden light.

 

The Imperial Library was a grand place, Teddy remarked, almost overwhelming in its magnitude. The upper five levels sprawled beneath a high vaulted ceiling, all connected by antique liftubes and gear-driven stairs, while the lower levels could only be accessed through a dedicated liftube. Every wall was packed with books, microfilms, and holochips, all properly catalogued according to subject matter in the tall shelves that doubled as further walls in the vast winding labyrinth.

Teddy had attempted to work out a map of the upper levels—an exercise which quickly proved futile and superfluous after Delarmi taught him how to use the primitive computers to print out maps and to outline paths on the floor. The Library went down for hundreds of floors, she had told him, but the History and Mythics sections were both in the upper levels so he had no reason to go past the fifth floor. He would have wanted to see the whole place for himself but neither Delarmi nor any other of the Library's black-robed inhabitants offered him—or even the ambassador—a tour. Indeed, he had a distinct feeling that he was straining the limits of their hospitality whenever he broached the subject of going further down.

“So, what are we looking for?” Tommy asked from across the desk. He didn't bother to look up from his holophone even though Trantor had no off-world hyperrelay to support interstellar communication. Teddy suspected that the pilot simply found comfort in the habit.

“It doesn’t matter,” Teddy sighed, turning off the holopad and rubbing his eyes.

“What do you mean ' _it doesn’t matter'_?” Green eyes flicked up and glared at him. “We’ve been here for two weeks.”

“Exactly. And I've found nothing. I'm losing hope here, man.”

Tommy made a loud impatient sound that earned them the ire of a nearby scholar. “Teddy," Tommy said as he made a rude gesture at the woman shushing him. "We came to Trantor because you said you’d find information here.”

Teddy laid his arms on the table and pressed his head against a forearm. There was a slight throbbing between his temples and he was certain it would mature into a migraine soon enough. “I said if any planet could help, it _would_ be Trantor.”

A short pause. Tommy finally put away his holophone. “Do you mean to say that you’ve read  _everything_ from the mythics section?”

“Well, no. But I’ve already read through everything that’s likely to be relevant. I’m working my way through more dubious sources now.”

“Professor.” A young yellow-skinned man approached the tabled, cradling a small tower of books in his arms. “Today’s list,” he said as he deposited the pile on the table.

There were many such scholars prowling the Library—of different skin tones, Teddy was astonished to remark, all dressed in the same black shift that Delarmi wore—quietly moving between shadows as they attended to their own affairs. Most ignored Teddy but sometimes he would catch one of them staring at him with a glare or a confused frown. And then, once caught, the embarrassed eavesdropper would hastily sink back between the shelves and disappear.

Teddy wondered if it was the first time that they were seeing a Terminusi. How wretched it must feel to them, the descendants of Imperial Trantor, to see a Foundationer in their hallowed Library, the final vestige of their lost birthright.

“Thank you. Just place them there,” he told the boy, who could not have been more than fourteen.

Tommy ran a hand through his silver hair and nodded at the boy. With a hum, he picked a book from the top of the pile and slid it across the table. “How about this one? This looks nice and interesting. It might be in here.”

“Tommy...” Teddy said, even as he read the book’s title:  _The Song of Trantor,_ writtenby Homer, the name traditionally ascribed to unknown authors of cultural epics. “I’m exhausted.”

“What are we even looking for here?”

Teddy frowned. He did not remember putting this book on his requested list. “You sure it isn't too _nerdy_ for you?”

“I’m not really one for fairy tales but sure why not. I’m pretty bored. Maybe I can help if you need a hand getting it up.”

"Space, man!"

The pilot laughed, eliciting another loud protest from the same woman, who quickly stood up and stomped away.

"Come on. Let me help. How... _hard._.. can it be?"

Teddy pretended to miss the double entendre and snorted. “Pelorat was working on the Origin Question.”

“What’s that now?”

“It’s a search for a legendary planet.” Teddy said absentmindedly. He flipped the book open and read the opening verse. “ _The_ planet.”

"Dun dun dun. Drama."

"The _first_ planet. So the drama is very much deserved."

“That’s sounds like a cosmological problem.”

“Anthropological, actually. The Origin Question posits that all of humanity descended from one mother planet.” Teddy looked up to gauge Tommy’s reaction. "The world whence all men came."

“That’s stupid,” his friend said with a frown. “Everyone knows there's no such thing."

“It’s very fringe, yes, as your brother said,” Teddy said, turning back to the book. It was a song of the early years of Trantor, just after it had unified the galaxy under the first Galactic Empire. With a finger, he quickly traced the lines for anything that might reference an origin world. “Where is the ambassador, anyway?”

Tommy rolled his eyes. “The ambassador is avoiding you, I guess,” he said, with some measure of accusation. “Never mind him right now. So this Pelorat was looking for the human homeworld. I gotta say, even for myths, that’s quite the tale. Twenty-five million worlds, descended from just one? Hard to imagine, much less believe.”

“Pelorat believed it. Branno too, since she personally commissioned the search and even authorized the use of the gravitic ship. At the very least, she must have thought the Question important enough to warrant an Answer.”

Tommy bit his lower lip, eyebrows pulling together in deep thought. “How about you? Do you believe it?”

Teddy closed his eyes for a moment and thought about it. As a mythicist, part of the job was to sieve cultural stories for kernels of truth.

“I don’t know,” he admitted, frowning slightly at the book as he turned to the next page. Even for something written in High Galactic, the style was archaic and highfalutin. “Conventional knowledge teaches us that the human race is the only observed end of evolution that results in an intelligent species. The expansion from one to twenty-five million seems preposterous, as you have pointed out. But at the same time, we are confronted with an equally incredible notion of the same species independently evolving on separate and isolated worlds. So therein lies the conundrum. Most anthropologists hold Convergence to be truth, as you know, but the Origin Question defies that conventional paradigm. And when you look close enough, you begin to see the holes in Convergence. There are many other Questions in history, to be honest. Many unanswerable Questions—unanswerable _for now_ , anyway. If we solve this one, we'll be  _rich_!”

“There’s the Hyperspace Question,” Tommy said.

“Exactly. A pilot would know that. And it’s connected to the Origin Question too. Records show that humanity has always been capable of hyperspatial travel even during Pre-Imperial times and further back into the mists of antiquity. In fact, there has never been a recorded time when the Race was  _not_  capable of hyperspatial travel. But, of course, this is a paradox. Every technology must have been discovered at some point. There's no _innate_ technology.”

“How is it connected to the Origin Question?”

“If humanity truly emerged from a single planet, then our ancestors must have used hyperspatial travel to colonize the galaxy. Solving the question of _when_ it was invented could help narrow down the list of candidate home worlds. ”

“Well," Tommy said with a frown. "It could also have been luminal travel and cryostasis pods. Or maybe human colonies spent generations aboard starships during interstellar travel.”

“As far as I know, there exists no evidence to suggest that we ever had technology for luminal speed or cryostasis. And there are no records of such self-sufficient starships that could support generations without stopping for fuel, food, or water.”

“That we know of.”

“It's a good start, to be fair,” Teddy huffed as he alternated between Tommy and book. The language was getting denser and more difficult to read but Tommy was proving to be a welcome distraction. "I mean nothing is certain, especially in history. So sometimes it helps to conceive of a hypothesis, a story that could accommodate known facts. The simpler the story and the less embellishments it has, the greater its chances of becoming a legitimate theory, probabilistically speaking. Just remember that from the scientific perspective, we must assume non-existence until hard evidence of existence is offered.”

“You can't perform experiments to test historicity so how do you get evidence?"

"With immense patience and difficulty. The historian must cross-reference historical documents to see if his hypothesis is able to explain what the documents show and he must also ensure that it does not contradict known pieces of history. For example, archeological records demonstrating the presence of pre-hyperspatial man on two planets would disprove the Motherworld hypothesis and answer the Origin Question with a resounding 'no'."

Tommy's frown deepened and he took his time before he replied. "I’m starting to appreciate the difficulty of your field.”

“Such a friend you are, if you only now—” Teddy paused at a particular phrase on the book. He noticed it quite by accident; in fact, at first glance, he had read it in the context of the Origin Question, before a second and infinitely more dangerous interpretation presented itself.

In these two lines, Homer sang of Trantor as:

_The thousand lights to which all stars bow,_

_Great End of roads, where waits man’s Home._

His eyes had latched on the word ‘Home’, which had invoked the idea of Trantor as the homeworld of the Race. It was quickly dismissed, of course, because the history of the old capital was well-documented, from its golden age as the Imperial throneworld to its foundling days as the young Kingdom of Trantor, and even further back in time to the exact year of its colonization by settlers from the neighboring planet of Delicass, proving beyond the shadow of a doubt that Trantor was not the original home of humanity. Besides, it was a terraformed world; the Race could not have possibly emerged there.

No, that wasn’t it. But something about those two lines bothered him, like an itch that penetrated the migraine that now held his head in an iron grip. And then, an imagery popped in his head, which forced the recollection of another piece of history. Every child of the Foundation knew this one: in the last days of the empire, Howard Stark developed the science of psychohistory and planted the Foundation on one end of the galaxy... A sanctuary of scientists tasked with preserving human knowledge during the decay and collapse of the first Galactic Empire so that it could reestablish a second Galactic Empire after the Interregnum, the millennium of darkness and barbaric retrogression in which the galaxy now found itself.

Only that was just half the story.

Stark _had_  founded the Foundation on Terminus... but he had also secretly planted a mysterious _Second_ Foundation, leaving only one enigmatic Riddle in passing: that it was established on the other end of the galaxy, on Star’s End. There was, of course, no such thing as Star's End on any star map and all attempts to find the planet on the other side of the galaxy had been met in vain.

Where Terminus was a shining beacon of scientific refuge and advancement known to all the galaxy, the planet of the Second Foundation was shrouded in the shadows of secrecy. And from their shadow world, the Second Foundation quietly guided the affairs of all humanity through galactic-wide infiltration and the subtle manipulation of political and economic forces. A Second Foundation that had inherited Stark's powers of psychohistory that he had denied to the First. A Second Foundation whose supremacy had thus threatened the destiny of the First, and so had been vanquished by the heroine Arkady Darell, who, by a combination of daring, wit, and serendipity, had disentangled Stark's Riddle. For the galaxy was not a line but a circle, she had reasoned out. And a circle had no end, so it must be that the other end of the galaxy was Terminus itself!

So the story went: the ancient enemy, usurper of the Foundation's right to rule the galaxy, defeated by a child.

Only she got the wrong planet. _Space_ , she got it all wrong!

Because the galaxy was not a circle but a spiral, Teddy noted with growing apprehension, and where was its other end but in the center, where ancient Trantor was ensconced, geographically and politically. It was the beating heart of the empire, connected to the star systems of twenty-five million planets that had once bent the knee to the throneworld. All stars led to Trantor, so the saying went, for it was Trantor that sat on the crossroads of stars. The planet to which all stars bowed.

"And so it is Trantor where all stars end," Teddy whispered to himself in horror, bringing the heel of his palm to his throbbing head. He was suddenly aware of movements in the corner of his eye, the robed scholars of the Library watching him, gliding and flitting between shelves and shadows, quiet and unseen. His heart was beating fast in his chest and sweat had begun to bead on his forehead. Without thinking, his hand started to reach for the war horn around his neck before he caught himself and instead covered his mouth to feign a yawn.

And now, very slowly, he lifted his gaze from the ancient book and did his best to assume a look of ignorance as he stared into the sharp green eyes of a member of the Second Foundation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I always seek to improve my writing so do leave a comment, good or bad. Your thoughts, dear reader, are always welcome.
> 
> Talk to me on Tumblr!  
> http://kleos-aphthit0n.tumblr.com


	4. Things We Find in the Dark

**Willeus Magni**. Of the many legendary figures appearing in the Theodan Mystery, there is none more illustrious, more enigmatic, or more divisive than Willeus Magni, cousin to the hero Thomas Magni and ambassador of the now disbanded Congress of Free Worlds. Scant is known of the man’s history, where he came from prior to the events of the Mystery, or what happened to him after; indeed, most mythicists cast doubt on the historicity of Willeus’s very existence due to the startling lack of any historical footprint and an abrupt and mysterious disappearance after the Starfall tragedy. And yet, no mythicist would deny that Willeus is a neccessary and  inextricable part of the Theodan Mystery for without him, the narrative disintegrates and key events become inexplicable. As such, the resulting paradox has been exalted by the academe to the status of a Question. Proponents of the Literalist School of Mythics argue that the preponderance of… Despite the efforts of many revisionists, conventional mythical theories continue to deny Willeus the traditional title of ‘hero’ due to the uncertain nature of his citizenship. It must be noted, however, that there exists a sizeable force of mythicists from fringe Schools of Free-Canonical Thought who hold the view that not only was Wileus a citizen of the Foundation but was also a member of an ancient Foundation society known only as the Table. Within the confines of the Mystery, it is obvious that the literalist paradigm provides the most satisfactory… The character is perhaps most famed for his contribution to the Origin Answer, his role in the atrocities committed on the rogue planet Phoenix, and, most of all, his supposed relationship with Theodan (though the precise nature of which is still subject to vehement scholarly contention). Not much is known of Willeus’s fate—if indeed he ever existed—except that he vanished after the Starfall tragedy and was never heard from again. It is presumed that he perished aboard the legendary starship Demiurge alongside his daughter Cassiopeia, who was… To the end of their days, Theodan and Thomas made no mention of a Willeus Magni. Today, Wileus’s name can be found etched on Theodan’s obelisk in the Cradle of Heroes, just beneath the hero’s own engraved name, there carved by an unknown hand and preserved in perpetuity by order of, surprisingly enough, then-Mayor Gregandess Norrives, who had been lover to Theodan in the years of his youth and, if rumors were to be believed, at the beginning of the…

**Reproduced with permission from Encyclopedia Galactica, 116th Edition, Encyclopedia Galactica Publishing Company, Terminus, 1020 FE.**

 

* * *

 

“I need some air,” Teddy said suddenly, keeping his brittle voice as steady as he could, even as his legs shook with the urge to bolt in a dead sprint. His skin prickled as he spoke, as though someone was breathing down his neck, even though he knew—he _knew—_ that there was no one behind him. “ _Real_ air. Air that moves—there might be a word for that but I forget now. Not stale library air.”

Tommy frowned, concern etching itself on his forehead, and gave Teddy a lookover. “Are you all right?”

“Yeah,” Teddy said. He forced a tired smile on his lips. “Just been cooped up for too long.”

Tommy scowled and pouted— _pouted!_ How thoroughly unsinister and child-like!—as he gestured at the opened books and unrolled microfilms scattered haphazardly on the table. “What about all this?”

“What about all this?" Teddy lifted two hands and shrugged indifferently. "I’ll catch up later.”

A distraught look settled on Tommy’s face. “Did you even finish today’s list?” he whined, exasperation coloring his voice.

“Tommy,” Teddy said weakly. He pressed his forehead on the table for a moment and then looked up. “I’m exhausted.”

Tommy sighed and, after a moment of deliberation, pushed against the table and stood up. “All right. Fine. Let’s go.”

“Let’s go?” Teddy frowned as he sat up.

“Yeah, you said you want some _moving air_." Tommy rolled his eyes and smiled. "Come on, then, professor. Let’s go.” 

“Oh,” Teddy said and just from the tone it carried, Tommy's smile instantly vanished. And that was just...  _Sp_ _ace!_ After this supreme betrayal, how could Teddy still feel guilty for lying to the liar? “I uh I thought I’d go alone, actually.”

 _Don’t feel bad for the enemy_ , a voice whispered in his head. _He's not your friend._

Tommy squinted at Teddy, green eyes narrowing to slits that were suddenly very reminiscent of the snakes of mythology. “It isn’t safe to be alone up there, Teddy,” he said in careful even tones.

“It’s fine, it’s fine,” Teddy said with as much flippant humor as he could muster, even throwing in a dismissive wave of his hand for effect. He smiled briefly and then pulled his face into a tired grimace. “I’ll be fine. I just need some alone time.”

Tommy’s face faltered and softened into something more uncertain. The trace of skepticism lingered on his face but he fell back to his chair. “Well, all right,” he conceded, albeit reluctantly.

 _Good_. Greg always did say he was a fantastic liar. Time to put it to better use.

“Thanks, buddy,” Teddy said, barely able to suppress narrowing his own eyes in accusation. “I’ll see you later.”

He took it as a sign of victory that Tommy quirked one corner of his lips into a weak smile. Teddy grabbed his satchel and quickly departed, all the while feeling the weight of those green eyes boring into the back of his head as he walked away.

 

 _Eyes, eyes, eyes_. There were eyes everywhere. Peering between bookshelves, over rows of books, behind microfilm cabinets. Hooded figures gliding between shelves—almost hovering—quiet, murmuring. All hidden in the dark. Watching him. Observing. Waiting. Assessing. He could almost feel their fingers digging into his head.

 _Eyes forward,_ he told himself as he wound his way through the labyrinth. _Ignore the whispers. Ignore the voices._ He almost turned at a sudden shuffling sound to his right. He might have just imagined that but regardless, he knew he should pretend ignorance. _They’re just scholars. Just students of books._ He had to keep thinking that.

The shelves seemed to tower around him, soaring monumentally and disappearing in the darkness overhead. Inky, pitch-black void like the night sky of Terminus, only without the reprieve of the Lens. Had the ceiling always been so high? Or had he been swallowed instead by some ancient beast and now he was waking up in its chest, trapped in the immortal darkness of its rib cage?

_Focus, Altermann, focus! You’re in the den of the Enemy—the nest of the Second Foundation!_

He shook his head and, with renewed purpose, increased his pace. Each footfall was an accusation, echoing in the dark: _I know what you are! I know! I know! I know!_ And his heart thundered righteously in his chest. He focused on his feet. Left foot forward, right foot next. Don’t run! Left, right, left, right… A good distraction from the graphene chain hanging heavy around his neck.

_You can do this. The liftube’s just over there now._

He took a deep breath as he stepped inside the car and, with a trembling hand, reached for the contact. The door closed and he sank to his knees, taking deep breaths as the liftube crawled up the shaft in creaking shuddering jolts.

 

Teddy stumbled out of the liftube and into a harsh yellow afternoon, quickly shielding his eyes from the sudden glare. With hardly a thought, his legs bolted in a dead sprint, making for the Vision first and then, remembering that he couldn’t fly a starship, sped past it.

“Shit, shit, shit,” he muttered to himself as he ran for the fence. Why didn’t he take flying lessons with Kate when she’d offered? Because he was an idiot, that’s why.

“Shiiiiiiit!” His heart was still thundering in his chest but at least the headache had loosened its grip somewhat. What was he doing? What was he going to do?

The wooden barricade looked low enough so he chanced leaping over it without slowing down. But his toes snagged on a panel and he crashed on the hard ground at full speed, skidding and kicking up a dust cloud as he skinned his forearms and the side of his left leg with the landing.

“Ah, space!” he cried out before he could stop himself. He was breathing hard, wheezing as he caught his breath, and his shirt, under the sweltering heat, was already soaking with sweat.

Skinny round-bellied children were trickling out of narrow alleys between patchwork houses and surrounded him in a loose circle. They were half-naked and filthy and their sour stench made Teddy want to gag. They pulled at his satchel and took turns poking him with a stick, which he swiped away ineffectively, but otherwise, they were quiet except for an occasional giggle or shriek when he tried to pull the stick away.

He tried growling to scare them off like he had seen dogs do in Terminusi zoos but that only seemed to amuse them. So instead, breathing heavily through his mouth, he rose slowly to his feet and forced himself to another run, ignoring the redness spreading through his shirt and the persistent stinging in his leg. He broke through the cluster of children, gingerly so as not to knock any of them to the ground, and sped off again in a full sprint.

He ran past the close-set hovels on planks set on the ground in the fashion of a makeshift road, taking care not to look any curious farmer in the eye lest his face made an impression which might be reproduced to a Second Foundationer (though the clean sight of fair skin and blonde hair would surely not be forgettable in these parts). Occasionally, despite the nagging voice in his head cautioning him not to, he looked over his shoulder to check for anyone in black robes. And though he saw none, he could still feel their eyes on him, even as their fence fell back in the distance, and the whispering voices were never too far from his ears. Under him, the wooden path gave way to bare soil, which quickly grew uneven and wet, painting the back of his legs with splatters of mud. He had a sudden surge of nostalgia for the street-side pavements of Trantor—smooth, paved, clean, unyielding, concrete pavements of Trantor that wouldn’t trip him or break his ankles… pavements where, in his childhood, he had played such games of pursuit with Greg and Jonn.

 _Shit._ What now? Where was he going? There was the beacon around his neck; he could snap it and Mayor Branno would save him.

_If you are ever in trouble, break it and I will come with the full force of the Foundation._

His finger hooked around the chain and just as he was about to pull, he heard Greg’s sneering voice in his head. _My Teddy, what a hero, off to an adventure and giving up on the first sign of trouble!_

No. The Second Foundation had remained in the shadows for almost two centuries, hidden, secure, and safe; if it were rearing its head now and making direct contact with the Foundation, then there must be a compelling reason—like one of those famous Stark Crises that occurred whenever the Foundation was at a critical juncture in its growth. He could not call an army now, he knew at once, not before he figured out  _why_ , after all this time, the Second Foundation would risk revealing itself to the galaxy _._

Teddy picked up his pace with a renewed vigor, flying past a small knot of girls carrying infants to their breasts and a gang of boys drinking in front of what must be the Trantorian equivalent of a roadside shop. His lungs protested the exertion and his muscles burned with lactic acid but he had to push himself; he had to get away. The sting in his arms and legs were a distant thought in his mind, muffled by adrenaline and the roar of his heartbeat, and for now that was enough to carry him forward. He cast his eyes far into the distance were waited another fence, behind which were sprawling farms and the farmers toiling them under the sweltering heat of a sun soon to set.

He had no plan, no credits, no extra clothes even, but he knew he had to keep running. He had to get away, as far as he could, and then, once beyond the reach of the eyes and ears of the Library, he would hunker down and think of a plan. If this were truly the Second Foundation, then he must not let them get the gravitic ship.

Teddy fell to his knees as soon as he had crossed the barrier, winded and panting. _Shit_. Who was he kidding? He was no adventurer, no hero; he was a historian—and an unremarkable one at that! What was he thinking going on a mission for the Foundation? His place was on Terminus… in his office sipping tea with students and faculty, surrounded by an impenetrable wall of books and microfilms, and then, after, in his home in the suburbs where Greg waited… That was his place... mediocre, invisible, untouchable, _safe._ What was he doing amongst the ruins of Trantor? On his knees, alone and bleeding, on this abominable planet that smelled like armpit and feces, in the black heart of the Second Foundation itself!

He closed his eyes for a moment and hung his head in defeat. _A Second Foundation that now has a gravitic ship, thanks to me_ , he thought ruefully. The chain hung loose around his neck, his sweat trickling down the thin metal so that it glimmered prettily in the light.

A shadow fell over him and when he looked up, he saw that a sizeable group of farmers had surrounded him, all squinting at him with those beady unintelligent eyes.

The closest one, a mangy shirtless man with a mustache flecked with grime, stepped in front of him and asked, “Ho! Be you scowler tuhdee?”

“What?” Teddy asked, indeed scowling. Behind him, two farmers were inching closer. He could smell the stench of hard labor emanating off them.

“Be you scowler tuhdee?” the man repeated slowly, as if speaking to a child. He thrusted a sharp finger to the sky. “Be you titled tuhdee, hoo be fell of star?”

“Uh, wh-what?”

"Ya, ya, this be he!" another farmer said. He leaned down until he was just inches from Teddy's face and painfully rammed a mud-caked finger under Teddy's chin.  "He be scowler tuhdee!" It turned out to be a woman, with cropped black hair and a pair of something that might approximately be breasts, though by the stench of her skin and breath, she was indistinguishable from the men. "Lookie-lookie, grain-hair and sky-eyes."

Hands clamped painfully around Teddy's arms, holding him in place as the group constricted around him. They had a sudden look of intelligence about them, gaunt faces beset with urgency and purpose.

“Hey! Le—”

Another hand clamped over his open mouth, pressing down so tight that the calloused palm scraped his lips and he tasted the filth. Their  _de facto_ leader, the one who had first spoken, fished out a short black rod from his pocket and brought one end close to Teddy’s face.

“Hey now scowler Tuhdee! Th’art biggish like Hamishman but art alane and injured. And I, hoo be titled torgiron, be holding this here tickler. Art not feared be touched by my tickler, scowler Tuhdee?”

Panic rose in Teddy as he stared at the glowing tip of the neuronic whip hovering an inch over his nose. He had never known the touch of one but he had seen its effects—one of those times in person; he still dreamed of it sometimes: Greg crumpled at Teddy's feet, convulsing horrifically and frothing at the mouth as the copman brought him to the brink of permanent paralysis for a crime he did not commit.

Tears were streaming down Teddy's face now and he screamed against the hand blocking his airway, managing no more than muffled impotent cries. He lashed out with his feet in an attempt to kick the man away, but the others were quick to hold down his legs, eliciting another scream when filthy fingernails dug into his skinned flesh.

“Lookie-lookie, mates! Pale scowler do scream like Hamishwoman tickled by Torgiron’s stick!” Around him, the farmers of Trantor shrieked with hideous laughter.

“Hey!” Another voice called out, somewhere from a distance, though the relief it brought quickly turned to blood-curdling fear. “Leave him be! Off with thee, Hamishmen!”

Torgiron stepped back a few steps and the crowd, in unison, turned its head towards the source of the sound. Teddy saw, through a slight slip in the farmers' ranks, the ambassador’s slender frame approaching, swathed in what looked like the black robes of the Second Foundation. His prominent beak of a nose was poking out of his cowl, followed by the rest of his snarling face, locked in a countenance of immense concentration. Teddy almost didn’t recognize Billy, with his kindly features twisted so monstrously in a display of feral rage. His black robes flared behind him, giving him the ominous look of a raven in flight, as if he were the very specter of death now descending upon them like a thundercloud, awful and beautiful and terrifying.

The farmers felt it too, for some of them seemed to shrink away and whimper, but most stood their ground and the ones holding Teddy down tightened their grip.

“Ho! Be you another scowler?” the one who called himself Torgiron asked, smiling to himself.

“Ya, we be scholars of the Place of Books.” Billy shouldered his way through the group and stopped in his tracks when he saw Teddy on the ground. He glared briefly at Teddy as if to say _Now, look what you've done_ and then, turning his back, set the weight of his stare on the leader of the mob. “Off now and leave us alane, Hamishman, and I will forget this here nerr happened.”

“Ho! Mates, lookie-lookie this scrawny up-nosed scowler, looking for fisticuffs with Torgiron. Why I—”

Teddy didn’t see what happened, Billy’s back turned to him as it was, but he immediately recognized it for what it was: the fearsome power of the Second Foundation revealing itself. One by one, men and women surrounding them fell to the ground in heaps, as though they had been gripped by a sudden mania of fainting. As if they had been puppets and the strings that held them up had been cut abruptly.

“One last chance, Hamishman. Begone and leave us alane or I will—”

And then, simultaneously, the felled farmers rose to their feet. A blank unfazed look had settled on their faces, quite as though they weren’t truly there and their thoughts were elsewhere preoccupied. They paused uncertainly for a moment, arms swinging loosely from their shoulders, and then, almost mechanically, stepped forward to close the circle around Billy and Teddy.

“Back off!” Billy cried out, retreating a few steps. He crouched beside Teddy and looked over his shoulder, glancing back with eyes wide with panic. “Stay down, Teddy, I am calling for help.” He took Teddy’s hand and gave it a solid, comforting squeeze.

 _How are you so brave?_  Teddy wondered, _S_ _urrounded as we are. Small, skinny slip of a thing that you are with your powers all but nullified?_  And despite all thoughts of repulsion against the Second Foundation, Teddy found himself unable to let go of Billy's hand.

There was a slight breeze and then suddenly, it was Billy who was crumpling to the ground. There had been a moment, just before it happened, when Billy’s face froze and a light behind his eyes flickered and died. And now he was motionless, collapsed in a boneless pile of black cloth.

“Tricksy little scowler,” Torgiron muttered, kicking Billy’s body to the side. Brown powerless eyes looked up at Teddy, wide and unseeing, and just like that, a farmer of Trantor had brought down a member of the Second Foundation.

Teddy’s grip tightened around Billy’s hand as Torgiron brought down the neuronic whip to his face. He could only watch as the rod traced a line above his nose and past his lips, finally resting a hair’s width above his Adam’s apple. The whip landed on the exposed hollow of his throat, pressing gentle as Greg’s kiss. Torgiron’s thumb slid over a contact and every muscle erupted in pain.

 

_Drip… drip… drip…_

“Hey, mister, wake up.”

_Drip… drip…_

Teddy groaned. His head was pounding.

“Hey!”

He twitched a finger. It moved. That’s good.

_Drip… drip… drip…_

The rest of him felt stiff. Muscles locked in place. Everything on fire.

“I see your eyes moving!”

A rustling nearby. To his… left? Under him was something flat and cold and hard, like stone or marble, certainly no heated polymer.

“Hey!” Something cold and mushy landed on his face. “Eeeeeeeeewe,” the voice said, giggling.

Teddy groaned and slowly opened his eyes. Not that it helped much. His vision was bleary—they had taken his contacts, he concluded immediately—and the brightness was so sudden he was all but blinded by the assault to his eye. “Whe-where am I?” His throat felt dry and his voice came out in a growl, raspy with disuse. He tried to turn his head, relieved when his neck budged, albeit slowly and very painfully.

There was a figure—just a girl—small, couldn’t have been more than eight. She was standing on her toes, her hands wrapped around what looked like steel bars and her face squeezing through the gap in between. “You’re awake!” she shrilled, looking very much like an apparition under the glow of the yellow lamp set in the stone ceiling above her head. “You’re from the Foundation, I can tell! And you came for me!”

The Foundation… yes… Teddy remembered. A little. The Foundation _did_ send him. He was on a quest— _space,_ his head hurt!—to find… To find a girl?

“Hey, hey mister, what’s your name?” she asked. “I’m Cassie. What’s your name? You’re here for me, right, mister?” ~~~~

“I… uh…” No. No, he wasn’t looking for people.

“Are you Teddy?”

“Uh, yes. How did you—”

“Who’s the other boy?”

Teddy frowned, momentarily confused, and paused for a long while, gathering his scattered thoughts into something that might make a coherent history. Then, he felt something soft and rough twitching in the iron grip of his hand. “Oh.” Under the harsh light, Billy's face was alarmingly pale and contorted in a hideous frown, as if he were trapped in a nightmare ( _which we are_ , came the thought to Teddy with rebuking sharpness). He had an angry-looking bruise blooming around his right cheekbone and a sharp cut on his swollen lower lip. Teddy laid a hand on Billy’s forehead and felt that it was clammy and slightly warm but otherwise showed no sign of a true fever. “Crewmate,” he said curtly, biting back the spite as he slowly extricated both his hands and turned back to the girl. “He’s fine.”

“He told me your name is Teddy,” the girl said and then after a while, added, “Where’s the rest of your crew? Sunmaster Thirty-Three said starships have big crews. Are you going to kidnap me?”

There was a trill of excitement in her voice and she pressed her body even closer against the bars, her wide blue eyes eagerly watching Teddy.

“We’re here for something else,” Teddy said, carefully pushing himself up. He cast a look at Billy again and saw that the man was sweating profusely inside the thick folds of his cloak. “We’re looking for a special ship.”

_He must be so hot. Should I take the robe off?_

There was a short pause both in the conversation and in his train of thought, and then, flushing, he turned back to Cassie. _Drip… drip… drip…_

The girl pouted and, with a flourish, withdrew her dainty hands from the bars. “Oh, the _Far Star_.” She said the name with pronounced heaviness, as if her young life had been profoundly blighted by it. “You’re Foundation, all right.” She turned away and sank to her knees, sniffling as she let her head tip forward in disappointment. “Where’s the rest of your crew?” she asked, when she had recovered from the vanished excitement of her kidnapping.

“There’s just one more. He’s—”

 _Traitor! Spy!_ Teddy’s mind screamed at him. _Enemy of the Foundation!_ And this girl might just be Second Foundation too, he thought suddenly, there to lull him into a sense of camaraderie through her innocence and a shared suffering in captivity—not that she looked like a prisoner; she was, after all, on the other side of the bars. He decided it would be best not to say anything just yet.

“I don’t know.”

“Are you the pilot?” the girl asked softly, looking warily over her shoulder.

“No, I’m just a mythicist.”

“Then why do you have the beacon around your neck? Sunmaster Thirty-Three said only pilots get to wear one.”

“I see that you’re wearing one too.” Teddy smiled. “Are you a pilot, Cassie?”

“They gave it to me, just before they—before they—”

She turned away from him and buried her face in her hands. Her small shoulders trembled slightly and then, quite suddenly, she turned to face him and, tears falling freely down her rosy cheeks, said, “I bore of you now. Goodbye, mister Teddy!”

She ran off to the end of the corridor before Teddy could stop her and disappeared behind a steel door, her long blonde hair trailing behind her and her bare feet slapping noisily against the concrete. As soon as the door had closed shut, the lights went off and plunged the room in darkness. Not quite a perfect darkness, as would have been used to torment a prisoner, but still thick enough that it took great effort of concentration to make sense of the surroundings.

Teddy shifted slightly and sighed. Then, he turned to the still sleeping man and frowned, pushing away all thoughts of the strange girl to focus on the situation at hand.

Billy had tried to save him; more than that, he _revealed_ himself to protect Teddy from those farmers. Even when he didn’t have to. Even when he was Second Foundation and Teddy was First. That had to mean something, right? That didn’t mean he could trust Billy but maybe it was a start.

“Please be okay,” he found himself saying.

 _He was awake just now and he kept holding my hand,_ Teddy thought to himself, glad that the darkness was there to hide the color creeping up his neck. Despite everything that had happened and everything he now knew about the man, Teddy was glad that Billy wasn’t dead. If not for his intrinsic politeness urging him towards a sense of gratitude or the misguided sentiment he still felt for their dashed friendship, then at least for the fact that he did not have to share a room with a corpse.

He felt a sudden pang of homesickness. For his homeworld, his university office, and his house in Flexner. For the friend who had been Tommy, and for Kate. For Greg.

He took a deep breath and turned away from Billy. He laid on his back and looked up, staring at the darkness of the ceiling and pretending that it was the night sky of Terminus.

Some hours later, after Teddy had managed to crawl—very painfully—to a corner of their shared cell and had wedged himself there, Billy finally woke and, much to Teddy's discomfort, cried out:

“Teddy!”

The ambassador climbed carefully to his feet, paced around like a lost animal, and groped about blindly with his hands; Teddy was certain that he couldn’t possibly see anything in the near absolute dark.

He watched the man for a while, unsure of what to do now that he was awake, but eventually decided that if anything could help him escape, it would be the mentalic powers of a Second Foundationer.

“Hey, man,” he said, amiably enough. “Over here.”

He heard a small sigh and the silhouette approached, its heavy robes making soft murmurs in the dark. “Hello,” Billy said as he sat down beside Teddy. 

This close, Teddy could just about make the hills and valleys of his face, the lofty nose, the rounded lips, even the slight arch of his eyebrow; the world had become darkness and the only thing he could see was Billy. The thought bothered him and brought color to his cheeks.

“How do you feel?” Billy asked.

“Like my whole body’s cramping.”

“A neuronic whip would do that.”

There was a rustle of cloth and Teddy felt Billy’s shoulder press against his. He bristled and leaned away, painfully mashing himself against the wall as much as it would permit. “I know what you are,” he said by accident, for just moment ago, he had had a strong notion that he should continue to feign ignorance of the fact.

“I know that you know,” Billy said, quite matter-of-factly. "Even before you ran away."

“Right. Of course because you’re—”

“Careful,” Billy said in warning. “We are not alone.” He tilted his head in Cassie’s direction and whispered, “She may be a spy.”

“She’s a child!”

“And children talk.”

“She isn’t even here.”

“There is no harm in being cautious. They already know what I am but let us not give them more information than they already have. We should not trust anyone.”

Teddy snorted. “And I should trust you?”

He almost expected an argument or even a snappy retort, in the manner with which Billy would often respond to Tommy’s provocations, but instead, the other man simply sighed and hummed, almost happily in fact, as though a weight had been lifted off his shoulders. “You should not,” Billy said, and then turned to Teddy with a knowing look in his eye. “But you do, anyway.”

Teddy averted his gaze and rested the back of his head against the wall. “Whatever. Just do your freaky mind thing and get us out of here so I'd never have to see you or your brother again.”

There was a pause before Billy spoke.

“Ah,” he said, a little embarrassed, though he did not sound the least bit moved by Teddy’s petty aggression. “I cannot.”

“What do you mean you cannot?” Teddy asked, raising his voice. “If you are what we both know you are, then this should not be a problem for you.”

“Scheme quietly, Teddy!” Billy hissed, flicking Teddy’s cheek with his forefinger; it stung quite a bit, to his surprise. “Someone will hear!”

“Ow…” Teddy murmured, rubbing the afflicted cheek with his hand. He turned back to Billy and was confronted by an annoyed face staring back at him. All nose and chin and cheekbones. And bony angles and wilderness of hair. Teddy glared and said, “Okay, okay. _Space_ , you _are_ Tommy’s brother!”

“My greatest flaw,” Billy muttered. “I am sorry but I cannot do anything about our predicament.”

“What do you mean? I saw you—”

“That was there. This is here,” Billy whispered very softly, leaning in so that the heat of his breath ghosted on Teddy’s skin. “Whoever these people are, they know what I can do and they have employed measures against my abilities.”

“What do you mean?”

“My mind is shackled.”

Teddy stared at him for a while. He could be lying, trying to gain Teddy's trust, but somehow, Teddy knew that Billy was telling the truth. “Great,” he said dryly, to mask the concern he felt. Concern for the _enemy_. “Does it hurt?”

Billy grunted an affirmation. “Without my other half, I have no hope of dismantling it.”

Teddy cringed. “Your _other half_?”

“Tommy.”

Teddy made an involuntary sound, followed by a shiver. “I knew it,” he said, shaking his head. “I knew it. If you knew what I’m thinking right now.”

“I do,” Billy said, chortling. “But only because you are an open book, Teddy. I need no mentalic sight to read you.”

“Excuse me.” Teddy bristled and made an offended sound. “I’ll have you know, I’m a fantastic liar.”

“You do not fool me, Teddy Altermann,” Billy said, face softening into a smile. “You are unreadable but I see you still.”

It was said with gravity, like its meaning extended to a deeper truth; the candor and the shamelessness of it unnerved Teddy in a way that put a tingle to his bones and made the hairs on his neck rise, but not unpleasantly (although the lack of unpleasantness was itself the source of another sort of discomfort).

 _How could anyone be so open and confident with his affection?_   _How_ _can he say such soft things in such a straightforward manner, with no shame or guilt or reservation? How can he—_

“Stop that,” Teddy said, scowling and leaning further away from Second Foundationer. He had just about pressed himself flat against the wall but Billy was leaning on him rather insistently.

“Stop what?”

“Tha-that thing. I don’t know. Whatever it is, stop it.”

“I-I-you lost me.”

“This thing! You know, _this_!” Teddy made an impatient waving of his hand between them. But Billy only looked at him blankly, as though he were speaking gibberish. Teddy took a deep breath and glared at the darkness in front of him and let the words tumble out of his mouth. “I may not be a seasoned spacefarer like you, Ambassador Magni, so these fine differences between cultures may sometimes escape me but I’m no fool. I see how you look at me and I know you see how I look at you, no matter how I try to resist the temptation that is you.”

He didn't know what had possessed him; he hadn’t meant to say that last part but his thoughts were racing faster than he could talk. Billy made a squeaking sound, which he adamantly ignored, and immediately retracted from him, breaking all physical contact.

“But whatever your _designs—_ " he emphasized the word, emboldened by his own uncharacteristic forwardness "—for me are, Ambassador Wileus Magni, they’re not happening. You got that? I’ve got Greg and you’ve got—especially when you and Tommy are… are…” Suddenly unnerved, he made a loud groan and buried his face in his hands. “Ugh! You and your brother should be more discreet. I’m not judging or anything but man it’s really gross. Space, you’re _brothers_! And Tommy has a girlfriend. And you have this thing with—even though I…”

_And I have a boyfriend… and… and…_

Teddy lifted his eyes and what remained of his progressively incoherent thoughts finally unraveled. He found himself staring at the disheveled hair, the brown eyes, and the pink lips now compressed to a tight smile and he fought the warmth blossoming deep in his chest. He could feel the tips of his ears tingling with heat and his heart quickening in his breast and his breaths were shallow and—

 _Oh no_ , he thought in horror, as he realized what was happening to him. _Oh no, oh no, oh no. This should not—cannot be happening._

And then Billy burst out in a sudden laugh, soft and high and bubbling and clear, a sound so pure it broke through the panicked cacophony in Teddy’s head. “I am not fucking my brother, you dunce!” he said, between fits.

Dumbstruck and a little awed by the expletive (and now he knew what it actually meant), Teddy stared at the man now lying on the floor. Billy was on his side, clutching his stomach as he laughed uncontrollably, so hard his whole body trembled and wheezed. He recovered after some time, turned his head to look at Teddy, and then fell back to laughing again.

"But... all those times on the ship..."

Billy laughed harder still.

"The personal space and... and the touching... and... and..."

Despite himself, Teddy started doubting. It suddenly seemed so ridiculous now that he had ever conceived of such a thing. Incest, of all things— _incest_! How could he have been so silly? It was a universal taboo, he was sure, and never mind the cultural revulsion, there was also the genetic compulsion against such a thing. Relief flooded him like a much-needed warmth… relief, which later, somehow, became something alarmingly akin to hope.

"Stop, stop, " Billy placed a hand on Teddy's arm, drawing himself up as he wiped away the tears at the corner of his eyes. "Please, no more." He drew a deep breath and released a shuddering sigh. "Tommy was right about you. You are quite the storyteller!"

"Well, I am a mythicist, sir," Teddy said, bristling, but he could feel his face warming with embarrassment.  _Incest..._ he might have kicked himself if he were able to. "And as one, I must ask," he continued, in an effort to steer the conversation to safer waters. "How is it that the Sec—" Billy's sudden warning glare arrested him "—your organization still exists?"

Billy drew another deep breath and took his time before responding, as if to carefully calculate his words. "We survived the girl—"  _Arkady Darell_ , Teddy's mind supplied "—because she was an unwitting part of our plan," he began. "Our forebears had calculated that a minority of First Foundationers would grow to resent us after the Mule's invasion; after all, we did defeat the mutant and liberate the First Foundation, all from the shadows, without revealing the identity of a single member. They saw us as a threat and the First Foundation's enmity towards the idea of a greater power overlooking and guiding its decisions was becoming a destabilizing variable to the Plan. The mathematics showed that that resentment would have inevitably spread and matured into a formidable resistance that would hamper our capacity to do our job."

He paused and considered Teddy. "You have such fragile egos, you know?" he said, to which Teddy only shrugged in response. "So we used the girl to make the First Foundation believe that it had destroyed us. Otherwise, you would have developed shields against our abilities and that would have undermined our efforts to steer the galaxy, which would have consequently endangered the path to a Second Galactic Empire."

"I remember what you did to those farmers. The entire army of the Foundation could not withstand one of you."

Billy nodded solemnly, without pride, as if Teddy had just noted an obvious fact.

"The Foundation was right to feel threatened," Teddy concluded. "You would usurp our destiny to lead the galaxy."

Billy turned to him and hissed, so softly Teddy almost didn't hear, "For we are the true heirs of Stark!"

"It was by our sweat and blood that science had survived the collapse of the Galactic Empire. And it is by our hands still that that knowledge is now being fashioned into the foundations of a second Empire. It is only right that our descendants reap the benefits of our sacrifice, don't you think?"

Billy tipped his head up, haughty and self-assured, "We have been custodians to the galaxy for hundreds of years now. It is _our_ hand that has been guiding Terminus towards the second Galactic Empire, as Howard Stark had intended."

"In the shadows, like scheming villains. And from the safety of your Library."

"Safety? Do you not remember your hero Darell? Fifty perished on Terminus, executed by the First Foundation itself! To assuage its self-worth and ensure its supremacy! Fifty lives so precious to us, lost! When all that we had done and still do, even now in the face of open animosity and physical hostility, was to protect the First Foundation—the very same Foundation who had us killed!—and to ensure that the Stark Plan remained on track. Fifty of the galaxy's most brilliant minds, volunteered and sacrificed so that the First Foundation would think us dead and that you may get on with your scientific work— _your_ job, as the Plan's preservation is ours. Fifty of our own— _fifty_!—extinguished just to protect your ego, so that _you_ may germinate and flourish on Terminus while we wallow and marinate in the squalors of fallen Trantor. Do not speak to me of comfort and safety, First Foundationer, for you have not known sacrifice or suffering as I have."

Teddy was taken aback, stunned into silence confronted as he was by the other man's indignation.

"Sorry," Billy muttered and turned away, leaning back against the wall with a loud thud. He run a hand through his brown hair, disheveling it into a state of deeper hopelessness. "Now I have gotten myself all excited, Professor Theodan Altermann. Such unforgivable behavior for an ambassador."

Teddy smiled placatingly and said, "Well, I won't tell anyone... if you'd forgive the ignorance of a small-minded Terminusi."

"The truth is that we need you now," Billy said after a long pause. "There is something happening to the galaxy, defying the predictions of our equations and resisting all our attempts at correction."

"I thought so." Teddy nodded. "If you had gone through such lengths to hide from the Foundation, I'd imagine you wouldn't make such blatant and heavy-handed contact with us unless it were something big. This is, after all, a mission commissioned by the Mayor herself, the most powerful figure in the Foundation. You wouldn't have involved yourself and risked her attention had you another choice."

Billy nodded. "The Table is afraid, Teddy," he whispered, as though Teddy would understand what that meant. "Nobody wants to admit it but the Table is afraid. There is a force at work here that we do not understand... a great mentalic power far surpassing the Second Foundation, I can now confirm, if the attack on me was anything to go by. You see, we have been working at this for more than two decades now, to no result. And so now, this mission is an act of desperation, for the only thing we know is that the Far Star had been involved. We find the ship, and we might just glean a clue."

Teddy let a moment of silence pass before responding. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have panicked and run away. It's my fault we got captured. Would you forgive me, ambassador?"

"Well," Billy said, turning back to face Teddy and smiling bashfully. "We did promise to be friends, spaceman."

Teddy's smile grew into a grin and he couldn't help but chuckle. "Friends," he said. And then, growing serious, added, "Just friends, all right?"

"Friends," Billy said, rolling his eyes as his lips morphed into an amused curl, like he knew something that Teddy didn't. "Sure. Why not."

_Wow... Cheeky bastard. He learned that from me._

"Friends," Teddy said with emphasis.

"Friends."

" _Just_ friends," Teddy repeated sternly.

"I shall make bracelets, posthaste."

Teddy snorted. "Funny," he muttered as his eyes roamed the darkness of their shared cell. "Friends forever, I guess."

Billy shifted, turning his body so that he was facing Teddy with alarming proximity, nowhere quite as invasive as he was with Tommy but definitely something of the intrusive.

"Watch it, Magni," Teddy said, taking in a sharp inhale. " _Just friends._ "

Brown eyes, brave and resolute and indomitable peered up at him through the tangled waving mess of brown curls. "We will get out of this, Teddy. I promise you that."

"How?".

"I am Second Foundation and you are First." Billy scoffed. "Between the two of us, what force in the galaxy could withstand us?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I always seek to improve my writing so do leave a comment, good or bad. Your thoughts, dear reader, are always welcome.
> 
> Talk to me on Tumblr!  
> http://kleos-aphthit0n.tumblr.com


	5. The Princess of Mycogen

**Yohnes     :**  You were scared? But you're a hero! We've all read the books, seen the films. It's hard to picture you as anything less than brave. 

 **Altermann :** You have to understand. I was just a child then, no older than you now, paralyzed and alone in a strange place. _Fucking Stark I_ —

 **Yohnes      :** Language, director!

 **Altermann :** Bah! You get to be as old as me, Miss Yohnes, you can swear all you want. I meant it was dark; I was practically blind for days. Alone  
                   and blind. Of course, I was scared.

 **Yohnes      :**  You were alone? 

 **Altermann :** Yes.

 **Yohnes      :** Thomas Magni said that you had company.

 **Altermann :**  Ah, yes. Well, I suppose I did. In a way. There was little Cassie.

 **Yohnes      :**  You smile. You were fond of her then? 

 **Altermann :** I was. We should have done better by her. Tommy and I. The things we did. We... We...

 **Yohnes      :** Are you okay, director?

 **Altermann :** To this day, little Cassie remains my one regret.

 **Yohnes      :** I'm sorry. 

 **Altermann :** You are kind, Miss Yohnes, but it is you who must forgive this old man his old heart. Please, let's continue.

 **Yohnes      :** Thank you. After all these years, would you finally speak of Starfall, director? I understand Cassiopeia was key.

 **Altermann :** I have already given my account. I believe there is a film about it now. 

 **Yohnes      :** Are you validating the historicity of Allen's _Ho_ _pe of the Foundation_?

 **Altermann :** Meh. He flattered Tommy too much but the gist's there. All of humanity knows what transpired that day.

 **Yohnes      :** Except for what happened aboard the Demiurge. 

 **Altermann :** As you well know, I was already back on Terminus when the ship went down. I have no idea what went on inside. Nobody does.  
                    There is even talk among mythicists of elevating it to a Question, you know? Their guess is as good as mine.

 **Yohnes      :** I understand, director. What of the events after?

 **Altermann :** A lot of things happened after Starfall. To which do you refer?

 **Yohnes      :** I have to ask, director. What became of Willeus and Cassiopeia?

                   (a long pause)

 **Altermann :** I am tired now, Miss Yohnes; I think that’s it for today.

 **Yohnes      :** Of course. Thank you for your time, director.

 **Altermann :** It was my pleasure. On your way out, please ask Tommy and my daughter to come up.

-end of interview-

 

**Transcript 4307. Hero's Last Words: Theodan Altermann's Final Interview, conducted by Munn Li Yohnes (562 FE)**

**Reproduced with permission from The Altermann Museum of Mythics and the Altermann Estate**

* * *

 

Somewhere, in the cold vacuum of space, just a mere 3.3 parsec hop from Trantor itself, floated an unremarkable starship carrying a single passenger onboard. It would seem unremarkable, despite the flamboyance of its colors, for the casual observer would not know its name nor its unique capabilities. The man inside would seem likewise unremarkable for his was the humblest of ranks, an officially designated ‘ _Observer_ ’. And it was this status that made him so unremarkable, if not for the fact that he was the most powerful man in the Second Foundation—though that too was a fact that remained unremarked even by the Second Foundation itself.

His Prime Radiant—handcrafted, ersatz, illegal—was activated on his palm and out of its top surface spilled out a borealis of blue wavering light veined prominently with thick red lines and shimmering prettily in the air. He was proud of these kinetic effects; the waver and the shimmer were clever artifacts, an aesthetic embellishment to the static display that was generated by the true Prime Radiants used by Speakers, but they also served a deceptive purpose, for should a wandering hand accidentally activate the device (though unlikely as he had engineered the contacts to respond only to his own genetic material _and_ mentalic signature) it would seem nothing more than a vain trinket. In truth, if one knew how to magnify the panorama, he would see that the pixels are in fact made of numbers and symbols to compose a map. Not in the general cartographic meaning of the word 'map', of course, but rather a 'map'—or, more aptly, a _Pla_ _n_ —in the psychohistorical sense. Simply put, it was the map of the galaxy's past, present, and future, expressed in the predictive equations of psychohistory.

There in blue were planets and sectors, represented in numbers and symbols, cascading inevitably into a Second Galactic Empire through the smooth and careful nudging of the Second Foundation, as was represented by the numbers and symbols in red. Of these blue equations, none shone more brightly or more elegantly as the Terminus equation, towards which all other blues were inexorably guided, and none glowed more dimly or more effervescently (even now, the numbers and symbols changed rapidly so that no observer could ever hope to capture and define it) as Star's End, the galaxy's overseer, which therefore must always remain lonely and unseen.

All these numbers had baffled and awed the Observer when he had been a child and even now, as a young man, he could still stare and marvel at the sublime beauty of this mathematics for hours on end whenever he found himself alone on his ship and his heart was yearning for Star's End. But now under high magnification, he studied the equations with great apprehension as thin black lines emerged, there introduced by an unknown force capable of a subtlety and effect that was both inimitable and incorrigible. The deviation was slight, of a perfect minimalism to which the Observer's own Foundation aspired, but the consequence was profound, for the planets that these black tendrils touched had begun to diverge from their path to the Second Galactic Empire. 

He made a gesture with his right hand and his personal corrective green lines appeared amidst the other equations. They were feeble and amateurish compared to the black and they were not as patient or as extensive as the red. But working on his own—and therefore undetected—the Observer had been able to quietly lay down his own plan, which he hoped would have enough time to solidify to serve his agenda.

With a complacent sigh and a bittersweet smile on his lips, the Observer sank into his chair, which yielded comfortably to his weight. And why not? He had played his part well and he had calculated and plotted the necessary interventions—all done to the last iota of possible minimalism, as his Second Foundation training had drilled into him.

For three days he had been recuperating, as the events on Trantor had harrowed and whittled his mind. And what use was a Second Foundationer with a damaged mind? It had been no easy feat to simultaneously commandeer a dozen Hamishmen, even for one as powerful as he, especially under the strain of physical and visual separation from the farmers. That difficulty had been further compounded by the need for an intrusion so delicate that even a Speaker would not detect it on a mind as profoundly barren as an Hamish mind. But the Observer had done it. Though it wore him to the bone, _space,_ he’d done it.

Not that everything had gone perfectly, of course. The Observer had not anticipated the violence of the First Foundationer’s reaction or that the Speaker would take so long to find him. The Observer definitely had not anticipated—nor wished for!—a kidnapping; all he needed was to provoke the Speaker into aggression and that would have satisfied his plot.

It was certainly regretful that a Second Foundationer’s life was now in peril. Especially _this_ one, who was a brilliant and dedicated Speaker—certainly the most beloved one, so that after years of working under him, the Observer had cultivated an inevitable and distracting fondness. An inconvenient fondness that had now matured into sentimental cracks in his resolve. And _that_ , just wouldn't do at all. For this was the Speaker whose seat at the Table the Observer was now scheming to usurp. 

Still, he wasn’t too distraught about it; the Speaker was a powerful mentalic and, moreover, a clever and resourceful man. Much more than the Observer himself. The Speaker could protect himself, the Observer concluded with mathematical apathy. Besides, should something truly tragic befall the Speaker, he would know at once.

The Observer shook his head, as if he could physically shake away the thoughts as well, and took a deep breath to prepare himself for the next battle. This one was less a game of proactive manipulation and more of silence. A game of invisibility and innocence.

 _Innocence_ , the Observer thought,  _how ironic._

But the story behind that thought was long and sad and, as time would not permit it, better left for reflection on another day. The assembly would soon begin and the Observer knew that some of his brothers and sisters would have already connected to the network. So, with another sigh, he flicked a secret gesture over a secret contact and a panel slid back from the left arm rest. He deactivated his Prime Radiant and returned it in its niche deep in the recess. Then, he reached inside another compartment and withdrew his mentalic amplifier, an unassuming metallic band fashioned into a coronet. He took a deep breath to brace himself and then placed the device on his brow.

He felt his mind expand as soon as his eyes closed, shooting fibers of inifinitely thin mentalic tendrils across space and hyperspace and spreading and branching out until a few found anchor on Trantor and the rest connected and fused with the mentalic tendrils of other Second Foundationers. If there were an instrument that could visualize this mentalic construct, he imagined it would look somewhat like a three-dimensional network, a cosmic entanglement that might best be imagined as the ball-and-stick representation of a macromolecule or perhaps a crystal lattice superimposed on the breadth of the galaxy.

When he opened his eyes—his mind’s eyes—he was no longer in his comfortable chair in space; he was, instead, standing upright in absolute darkness and was seemingly alone. But he felt the others around him, four hundred thirty-eight of them that brushed and bristled against the soft tissues of his brain, and more still rapidly winking into existence as they joined the network. The Observer could feel some of them tethering to his own mentalic strands, which didn’t hurt as much as he’d imagined. But instead it tingled… intimately. Pleasurable, even, in the way of sex. There was power there, in the unity of their mentalic network, that far surpassed the additive sum of their individual strengths, but that was not the point of this assembly. Finally, when all members of the Second Foundation had appeared, a Table appeared before him, so cloaked and mired in shadows that it was only barely visible.

And so it was that in a chamber uncannily resembling an airy poorly lit amphitheatron in the coldest gloomiest bowels of the Galactic Library, a congregation of one thousand men and women, all in their standard black robes and silver chains, gathered around a Table. There were always one thousand of them, never more, never fewer, in all five hundred years of the Second Foundation’s existence. The thousand most brilliant mathematical minds of humanity silently ruling—nay, _guiding_ —the galaxy through the span of the Interregnum. Twelve of the Table, and nine hundred eighty-eight of the Hands. In all its history, only once had the thousand been called home and assembled in full force: two centuries ago when the First Foundation fell to the fearsome powers of the Mule. And now, another assembly had been called. For the one thousand, without preamble, had suddenly found themselves reduced to nine hundred and ninety-nine.

 _Oh, yes_ , thought the Observer standing in the shadows of the balcony, an unremarkable face in a sea of nine hundred ninety-nine _,_ _things are going according to plan_.

And all it took was a book covertly added to the First Foundationer’s pile.

The chamber rang with cacophony—well, as much cacophony as the Second Foundation could make, for it has long been discovered that an acoustic language was an inefficient vehicle of thought and a helpful medium for the interception of spies besides; instead, Star's End had its own means of communication, one that rested mostly on direct mentalic congress, physical gestures, and well-placed pauses. Now, the nine hundred ninety-nine was a swarming buzz of activity and noise, the full strength of the nine hundred eighty-eight Hands speaking with the Table of eleven, for the Table heard them all at once.

The Observer added his own ‘voice’ to the mix, leaping back and forth with his Second Foundation mind between two Speakers, who replied with quick soothing caresses and the occasional jab whenever he, quite deliberately, overstepped his place; that was expected of him, after all. This went on for a while, a studied courtesy on the Table’s part to allow the nine hundred and eighty-eight a chance to lend their thought and voice.

Then, once that chance had been deemed adequately prolonged, a lone figure rose from amongst the Table, taking its time to get to its feet, and then turned to look around. It was the First Speaker, whose title, in theory, meant only the right to open and speak first in any gathering of the Table but was otherwise equal to the other eleven Speakers. Though in practice, of course, the position commanded greater privilege. _Primus inter pares._ The First Speaker spoke with a favored voice; on any matter of policy or law, the Table honored the First Speaker’s will unless, in an audacity similar to a coup, a supermajority of hostile Speakers voted against the First Speaker _._ ~~~~

And now that this First Speaker had risen, the chamber fell silent—a true Second Foundation silence devoid of sound, movement, and thought. The Speaker had a kindly look about the face, with the patient wizen smile of a doting elder. But the Observer knew better than to fall for the façade. The First Speaker looked about for a few more moments, extending a mentalic touch to each mind in way of greeting, in the same manner one would extend a handshake that was just a tad too firm.

The First Speaker’s lips parted and the eyebrows lifted at just the right angle and with just the right speed. At the same time, a mentalic wave emanated from the Table and rolled gently across the Second Foundation. If their ‘language’ could be chopped up into syllables and its complexities crammed and vulgarized into words, what was expressed might have been best approximated as “Welcome home, brothers and sisters.”

Another wave rose, this one from the Hands, and rolled back to the First Speaker just as gently. “Hello, First Speaker,” it might have said in a spoken language.

“The Table has called this assembly,” the First Speaker continued, “to address the disappearance of one of our own.”

Nine hundred ninety-nine pairs of eyes—Hand and Table, both—turned to the empty seat at the Table, where their thousandth would have sat, had he been present.

“Two days ago, in the middle of an assignment, a Speaker and a First Foundationer vanished without warning or trace. We have been unsuccessful in reestablishing mentalic contact with our brother since.”

A short commotion rippled through the Hands. _If one as powerful as a Speaker could be vulnerable, on Trantor of all places, how safe are the rest of us?_ , was the general sentiment.

“Could the Speaker be dead?” asked one of the nine hundred eighty-eight—a Wrench—though the Observer did not recognize the feel of the mind.

“The Table has not decided,” a second Speaker said, rising to its feet to join the First.

There was another murmur and a bristling of minds. The Speaker had used the gesture to imply that the decision was somehow the Table’s prerogative.

“Do you seek a twelfth?” a different mind asked, hard, crude, its ambitions laughably obvious.

 _That one would pose no threat_ , the Observer thought contemptuously to himself.

“The Table has not decided,” the second Speaker repeated.

“The Table must always have twelve. Is this not why you have congregated us?”

A sharp prick. The First Speaker turned to the voice and hissed, “We did not call an assembly for the trifling matter of selecting a Speaker.”

 _Obviously_ , the Observer thought privately, _very_ privately. _That’s the First Speaker’s right._

“Of course, First Speaker,” the voice murmured, already melting back into the mass of the nine hundred ninety-nine.

A third Speaker stood, turning to the congregation slowly with a warm sympathetic countenance on a wrinkled face. “The Second Foundation is closing ranks,” he said.

“Brothers, sisters,” a fourth Speaker said quickly, rising to its feet before the Hands could divine the third Speaker’s meaning. There was a tremble to that voice, as though it was fearful of what would come next, which the Observer, as he had schemed the whole thing, had already forseen. “The Table invokes nostos.”

There was a short moment of true and absolute silence, followed by the inevitable storm. The Observer barely managed to erect a shield (he had to time it perfectly, otherwise it would have been obvious that he was anticipating the outcry) before the nine hundred eighty-eight railed against the Table in an eruption of mentalic outrage. The amphitheatron quickly descended into chaos, as the Table of eleven fought back the tide of nine hundred eighty-eight furious Hands, all protesting, begging, shrieking against the invocation. The Speakers’ voices were the loudest, of course, ringing high and clear over the din.

“We do not make the decision lightly,” said One.

“There is no other choice,” said Another.

“Both Foundations are under siege,” claimed a Third.

Still, the Hands raged with their minds. On and on for what might have seemed like hours in the protracted time inside a mentalic world.

“You are quiet, brother,” the private voice of the First Speaker whispered to the Observer, even though his voice had joined the mental tempest to keep up pretenses.

“I am worried,” the Observer replied after a short calculated pause. “The Speaker is a formidable man.”

The First Speaker’s mind swirled within the Observer’s, who welcomed it fully and without hesitation. A Hand’s mind, after all, must unfold before a Speaker, whenever demanded. But the Observer knew how to keep secrets still, even from another mentalic. It took him great effort to draw them to his core of cores, which even a Speaker, unless invited, could not penetrate without injury. It was a surpassingly uncommon skill, like ambidexterity or polydactyly, something only one who was mentalic by birth could ever have hope of mastering.

“Indeed he was,” the First Speaker said, withdrawing from the Observer’s mind with a glow of satisfaction. “And that is why we have no choice but to invoke nostos.”

“You speak of the Speaker in the past. Do you believe he is dead?” the Observer asked, with genuine worry coloring his ‘voice’.

“I do not,” the First Speaker said, firmly though with great worry and sympathy. “But the rest of the Table urges me to name a new Speaker soon. ‘There must always be Twelve’, so I’ve been told. And given the times…” The Voice drifted off, pulled away by a sudden apprehension.

“Of course, First Speaker, of course,” the Observer said, with the mentalic equivalent of bowing his head. “But what of the missing Speaker?”

A beat of silence. “Come home, brother. I have a mission for you.”

The Observer let his mind touch the First Speaker’s for a final time, in the amalgamated form of acknowledgement and farewell in their language. Then, he withdrew completely from the assembly and felt himself retracting through space and hyperspace, until all of him was back in his comfortable chair in his comfortable ship,comfortably afloat in space. If there had been anyone onboard watching him, it would have seemed that it had not been more than two seconds since he had placed the coronet on his head.

The Observer smiled absently, with his real face this time, as he removed the device from his head. He had not been prepared for the First Speaker's attention to fall on him so soon. But all the same, it turned out better than he had expected. He touched another contact to bring out his toolbox. Still smiling, he began to dismantle his mentalic amplifier and hummed to himself.

_Oh yes, things were definitely going according to plan._

 

Teddy's gaoler came the next day, announcing his arrival with a tuneless whistle and the loud metal clang of a door opening.

“Ho!” It was that farmer from Trantor, speaking belligerently from inside what looked like a newly pressed uniform. In the limited light that spilled through the open door at the end of the hallway, it seemed that his black hair had been meticulously tamed, combed over to one side of his head in old Imperial fashion. He might have been handsome, if Teddy were being honest, the kind of attractive that might have made Greg sock him in the mouth if this had been a bar or a club and he looked at Teddy in the same manner he was looking at him now. Unfortunately, despite the ministrations of the farmer's vanity, the odor of Trantor clung potently to him still. He had the neuronic whip in his hand, with which he made a loud rattling noise by dragging it across the bars of the cell.

“Thy memory be good, scowler Tuhdee. You remember my tickler?” he said with a grin, grabbing the sizeable bulge on his crotch when he saw Teddy backing against the wall. “Here, here, little scowler. There be labors for today.”

Teddy did not reply. Instead, he wrapped his arms around his torso and hunched in an attempt to make himself smaller. _Go away, just leave me alone_ , he thought weakly, wide eyes darting quickly between Torgiron and his cellmate.

Billy, on the other hand, remained standing where he was, nose high up in the air and with a glint of haughty defiance in his eye. Teddy could see the struggle on the Second Foundationer’s face, fighting to break through the prison around his mind.

The door to his cell swung open and the farmer entered. “Art feared of Torgiron, scowler? Good. I will not whip thee if th’art cowardly and competent like proper scowler be.”

“Leave him alane, hamishman,” Billy said, grabbing Torgiron’s arm.

“Off with thee, scowler!” the farmer growled. The neuronic whip flashed in the air and landed on the back of Billy’s hand with a loud smack. It wasn’t turned on but the threat of it was enough to make the Second Foundationer leap away with a yelp. Torgiron seized the moment of distraction and planted a mighty kick in Billy's chest, sending him flying against the wall. He slammed against it with such force that Teddy heard the  _whoof_ of air from his lungs. With a sneer and a harrumph, Torgiron turned away and dragged Teddy behind him.

“Teddy!” Billy cried out, running for the open door just as Torgiron slammed it shut.

“He will be back, scowler,” the farmer grunted as he pushed Teddy through the corridor.

“Where are you taking me?” Teddy managed to ask as Torgiron locked the second door with a key. (A physical key! An honest and proper metal key with teeth and grooves that had to be inserted in a keyhole and then twisted to engage an archaic spring-based mechanism! Captured and beaten though he was, Teddy could not help but marvel at the antique.)

The farmer-turned-jailer didn’t answer Teddy’s question. Instead, he led Teddy up a narrow staircase and along another long corridor lined on both sides with more cells, though none of them were presently occupied. When they finally stepped out of the building, Torgiron shoved Teddy forward, nearly toppling him down a wide set of steps.

Recovering, Teddy looked up and saw a sky, blue with a disperse spattering of feathery cirrus clouds, and quickly shielded his eyes. There was a shimmery quality to it and he knew at once that it was simply a projection.

“Professor Altermann.” A tall spindly-looking man in gray robes was approaching from the bottom of the steps. He carried himself slowly, with deliberate pomp and gravity, and his wrinkled sallow face had the stern look of one accustomed to telling people what to do. “I am Sunmaster Thirty-Three,” he said. And now that he was close enough, Teddy noticed that the shine reflecting off his head was no illusion; the man was bald and had no hair to his face, not even a strand of eyebrow or eyelash. If he had to guess he'd say the man had undergone total follicular depilation.

 _There_ was a clue—to a mythicist, at least. Teddy withdrew his eyes and averted his gaze to the man's eyes, lest his face betray his thoughts, and then opened his mouth to address the strange man.

“I am not here to answer your questions,” Sunmaster Thirty-Three of Mycogen said, raising a hand before Teddy could speak. Unfortunately, he had no prominent accent or any morphological eccentricity to his body to identify this planet's identity. There was the choice to baldness but Teddy needed more.

"U-understood."

The old man stared at Teddy's head (his hair, presumably) and wrinkled his nose. “In fact, I think it would be best if you keep from speaking unless addressed.”

Teddy closed his mouth and fought the urge to shrink before his captor. He was no adventurer, no fighter, and definitely no hero. No weapons, no training, and, now, no friends—well except for Billy and he wasn’t even completely convinced a Second Foundationer could count as an ally. But _great Stark_ he still had his mind. He was a historian; that’s sort of a scientist, right? If he could not survive by his fists or even the Second Foundation’s protection, then perhaps he could by guile. If salvation existed, then surely his would lay there. With a sudden surge of courage, he lifted his eyes in what he hoped was a cowed look and directed all his faculties to observation.

“You learn quick. Good.” Sunmaster Thirty-Three turned to Torgiron and frowned. “Art confident he be safe?”

“Yes, Sunmaster.”

“And the other scowler?”

“Awake, be crying on the floor for this here his mate.”

“Gad, gad. Now, now, leave us alane, Torgiron.”

Teddy nearly leapt when the tip of an inactive neuronic whip prodded his back. Torgiron let out a loud guffaw, throwing his head back in a throaty laugh as he made his way back to the jailhouse.

“Savage,” Sunmaster Thirty-three muttered as the farmer disappeared behind the door. “Come now,” he turned away and started walking in the direction of what looked like a groundcar.

That riled Teddy a little. He could have snuck up on the man, knocked him in the head, and ran. A good strong shove down the steps might have done the trick too, considering his age. But both men knew that it would be pointless to do any of that; Teddy was a prisoner, despite the obvious absence of manacles or any other restraining device, and he had nowhere to run. Where would he escape to, then, when he did not even know where he was? He could still kill the old man, of course. He could, as an ultimate act of spite and desperation, forfeit his life and take down his captor with him. Yet Sunmaster Thirty-Three felt confident enough in Teddy’s cowardice that he could turn away and expose his unprotected back.

Teddy followed him down the steps, quietly as he had been instructed, simmering in his utter impotence. Once they had entered the car and the doors had closed, the windows were quickly tinted by an obscuring black liquid that flowed between the parallel plates of glass.

“You might have noticed that we treated your wounds. Take it as a token of good will. I hope you could extend the courtesy by helping us out with a task.” Sunmaster Thirty-Three, seated across Teddy, took out a holopad and handed it over. “I am looking for someone,” he said, leveling Teddy a cold stare with his milky eyes.  “And I think you can help. You may speak freely in this car.”

Teddy swallowed and took a deep breath before speaking. “Who do you want me to find?”

“We have received a message from our youngest. But we cannot decode its content nor its origin,” he said, gesturing at the holopad.

“Your youngest?” Teddy asked as he lowered his gaze to read the text on the holopad. Sunmaster Thirty-three did not respond. “Why should I help you?”

“Because you want to live.”

“How do I know you won’t kill me anyway?”

“You do not. But fail me and I promise you suffering in life. _That_ , you can know.”

The car veered to the left, flinging Teddy rather violently to one side. Pre-nuclear engines with no centripetal counterbalance, he noted with great contempt. Clearly a non-Federation world _._

“Your threats of torture do not move me, sir,” he said with a deliberately obvious play for a bravery that he didn’t possess.

 _Let him find me a coward,_ Teddy thought.  _Let him sneer at me and underestimate my spirit. All I need is the right moment._

Sunmaster Thirty-Three smiled patiently, not unlike how a grandfather would smile at a favored grandchild, though it was clear that he saw through Teddy’s bluff and was quickly tiring of the bravado. “Then perhaps I’ll let our farmer friend have his way with the young and supple ambassador instead, hmm?" he said perfunctorily. "Unlike you, Magni has no Foundation behind him. Well, not the right one anyway.”

Teddy glared at the old man and knew that _his_ was not a bluff.

Then, with a quiet exhale, he turned back to the holopad and continued reading. “This is encrypted,” he said after a few minutes. “And I suppose you expect co-ordinates hidden in the message?” He still had the chain around his neck. He’d break it once he was back in his cell.

Sunmaster Thirty-Three nodded thoughtfully. “My men told me as much, though the conclusion came to them much more slowly. I am glad to have procured a Foundation mind.” He smiled again, sharp and cold as a knife. “We have arrived.”

They stepped out in an underground carpark, just in front of an archway marking the entrance to what seemed like a small bookstore.

“Come.”

Teddy trailed behind the old man, carefully taking stock of his surroundings for anything that would betray their location. The room stank with dust and age and possibly vermin piss and droppings; there were books and computers—very primitive models from the first look—piled around a lone chair and desk but other than the overpowering sense of disuse and decrepitude, there was nothing remarkable that might reveal the planet’s identity.

“It is no Streeling Library but you may use any of our resources.”

Teddy smiled. _There. The confirmation,_  he thought. _This Sunmaster Thirty-Three isn’t so smart after all. Who else would refer to the University of Trantor Library as Streeling Library but a native of Trantor?_

“I’ll do it,” Teddy said. “I’ll decode the message in exchange for better treatment.”

“You wouldn’t bargain for freedom?”

Teddy shrugged. “That too. But I don’t trust you. This way, at least I am certain to get something out of this arrangement.”

“Better treatment and eventual freedom.” Sunmaster Thirty-Three promised, smiling warmly though his eyes glinted with a swindler's victory. “In exchange for the message.”

“Deal. I would like a cot and a blanket," Teddy said, keeping his gaze straight and his voice steady. And then, blushing fiercely, quickly added, "I mean  _two_ cots and _two_ blankets.” 

Still smiling, Sunmaster Thirty-Three nodded. Then, he lifted a gnarled finger and pressed it on Teddy’s necklace. “This is a lovely piece of jewelry, professor,” he said meaningfully, sharp eyes flicking up to meet Teddy’s. “I do hope you take care not to break it.”

Teddy forced a strained smile, even as the old man chiseled off a little bit of hope. “Of course.”

 

Hours later, Teddy’s head was swimming with numbers and letters. Decryption had never been his forté. It required a certain kind of mathematical pareidolia for which Billy would have been better suited. He wondered why Sunmaster Thirty-Three hadn’t asked for the Second Foundationer instead; if it were a matter of decoding, surely Billy’s mathematical mind would be more appropriate than Teddy’s knowledge of history. Perhaps he thought the ambassador would recognize Trantor immediately.

“What are you trying to say?” Teddy moaned at the holopad, pressing his fingers against his temples as he let out a deep groan.

The triptych ‘computer’ was spread out before him, a prehistoric instrument that projected information through a liquid crystalline display and received commands through an elevated array of tiny spring-loaded tiles that yielded nicely under the pressure of his fingers. There was some kinetic-interactive capacity to the screens, _thank Stark_ , which allowed him to select, drag, and magnify objects, but there were no mathematical or statistical software installed and, as far as he could tell, the hardware was not equipped with any voice recorder, which meant that he had to manually input most of his instructions to the computer.

As he labored to wring functionality out of the ancient machine (a stretch of the word, really), he couldn’t avoid an encroaching sense of sympathy and guilt. If this were how non-Federation worlds lived... in such state of deep savagery... Were the farmers of Trantor doomed with computers as decrepit as the one Teddy had to suffer now? Did they have to use their _hands_ to operate them? Teddy shivered at the thought. He could not imagine himself in such a cursed life. With a deep breath, he rubbed his eyes and turned back to his work.

The cypher was only five lines long but it was turning out to be incredibly complex. His domain was history, _ancient_ history to be exact, which inevitably overlapped with the fields of symbology, linguistics, and, to some extent, cryptology. And all that helped to some extent. There was something familiar to the message and he had this feeling that he ought to recognize the pattern. The message was not in Standard Galactic, that much was sure; whatever it was, it was based on a primordial language, which many historians had come to calling ‘Proto-Galactica’, and was cached in a code reminiscent of those from used during pre-Imperial. But the pattern seemed corrupted, like it had mutated somehow, and was now an unrecognizable grotesquerie with only vestigial traces that hinted at its original form. This 'youngest' was a historian, Teddy was sure, and he must have taken an old method of encryption and turned it into something new. It was genius from the academic perspective, really. An entire day of trial and error, and the three panels were a mess of charts, functions, and equations with not a single meaningfully decoded word.

“He’s hairless,” he told Billy in the afternoon, as Torgiron brought him back to his cell.

To his surprise, Cassie was there too, barefoot in her white dress and sitting daintily on the cold floor. She had a short rectangular lamp to her side, which painted a bleak yellow pallor on the room. She was talking animatedly to Billy, who was likewise seated on the other side of the bars, and waved happily at Teddy when she saw him step through the door.

“Mister Teddy!” she all but shrieked in that piercingly  _blonde_ voice of hers.

“Cassie,” Teddy said, wincing as Torgiron shoved him in the cell.

The farmer glanced warily at the little girl, watching her from the corner of his eyes as he locked the door. Teddy half-expected him to scold her or to shoo her out but instead he kept his distance and left without a word.

“He’s a savage,” the girl whispered conspiratorially to Billy, eyeing Torigiron’s back as he walked down the corridor. “What’s a savage, mister Billy?” She turned to him with her wide blue eyes and blinked.

Billy’s face twitched but he smiled anyway. “It’s a bad word, little one. An insult for those born less fortunate than us."

“Oh!” The girl seemed startled and a small pale hand flew to her small pink mouth, as if to prevent a further deluge of bad words. “Oh!” she said again, flushing a brilliant scarlet. “Poor Mister Torgiron! But Sunmaster Thirty-Three said—I heard him!”

Billy turned up to meet Teddy’s eye and gave him a _look_ , a slight arching of the right eyebrow, which Teddy was certain was meant to communicate something that Tommy would have understood.

But Teddy was not Tommy and he definitely did not understand. So instead, he simply rolled his eyes and plopped down beside Billy. “Is it safe to talk?” he muttered, looking around for any telltale sign of surveillance.

With pronounced listlessness, Billy hummed and said, “My mind would feel the touch of a spybeam if one were aimed at us. But whisper still, my friend, in case there are human ears listening.” He tipped his head toward Cassie and give Teddy another look.

Teddy nodded and inched closer to the bars so that he was just a foot or so from the girl. “Who is Sunmaster Thirty-Three, Cassie?”

The girl’s lips curled to a pout. “I don’t know.” She wrapped her hands around the bar and leaned closer. “They say he’s my grandfather," she whispered, eyes darting left and right as if she had just divulged another secret. "But, no!" She threw her head back and shook her hair, proudly, defiantly. "I shall never accept it! He's rather ghoulish, don't you think?”

“Who?” Billy asked. “Who says he’s your grandfather?”

“The rest of the Mycogenians, silly!”

“Are they all bald?”

“Yes!”

“Even the women?”

Cassie giggled. “Yes.” She pulled at a stray lock of blond hair and twirled it around her forefinger. "All of them."

Billy tilted a little toward Teddy and whispered, “We are on Trantor, still.”

Teddy nodded, humming in agreement. “I thought so.”

“It is remarkable that Mycogen sector still survives,” Billy mused. “Everyone thought only Streeling escaped the Sack.”

“Does that help us?”

“With my mind in chains, not really.” Billy turned back to Cassie and smiled. “Little one, how old are you?”

“Fourteen.”

“You’re small for your age!” Teddy exclaimed, taken aback. Wide-eyed, he scanned the girl and shook his head.  _Far_ too small; she looked no older than seven or eight.

Cassie turned away and pouted. “You’re mean, mister Teddy!”

“Oh, I’m sorry, sweetheart. I didn't mean to!”

The little girl turned back to him and leaned closer. “Sunmaster Thirty-Three says I’m special,” she murmured again with a secretive smile, her breath warm and a little sour.

“Oh, I should say so,” Billy said knowingly with a lopsided smile. “Do you know what makes you so special?”

Little Cassiopeia blushed and bit her lower lip, tipping her chin to her chest and batting her lashes at Billy. “Oh!” she said suddenly, head snapping to her left, in direction of the door. “Sunmaster is calling me!”

She was immediately on her feet and then dashed off in a sprint, leaving Billy and Teddy alone in their dark cell. A few seconds later, she came back, placed her lamp on the floor just out of Teddy’s reach, and was gone again.

“She’s a queer one,” Teddy remarked, as the door closed behind the fleeing girl.

Billy climbed slowly to his feet and grunted. “You don’t know the half of it.” He was wobbling slightly and his face was wan and wet, as if weighed down by exhaustion or sickness. Teddy took his arm and led him to the far wall, where he leaned and rested with a trembling sigh. He closed his eyes for a long moment and smiled. “I owe you an apology, my friend. I was wrong.”

“About what?”

“We cannot do this.”

 _No, no, no. You can’t. You can’t give up_ , Teddy thought with a cold prickling of his skin. _You’re supposed to be the brave one. You’re supposed to keep me calm. I can’t do this without you._ His hands opened and closed at his sides. “Billy…” he said softly, pleadingly.

“I can barely see,” Billy sighed, sliding down the wall and pressing the heel of his hand to his head. “And I am so...” he frowned and looked around, as if the word was hiding from him in the dark. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and shook his head. "Lost," he said finally.

“We’ll find a way.”

The ambassador nodded absently with faraway eyes. “No, that—it was not—” A deep breath. “That was not what I meant. I owe you another apology for alarming you.” He was quiet again for a while, rubbing his eyes and chewing on his lower lip thoughtfully. Then, as if having decided something, he said “Okay.”

“ _Okay_?”

Billy nodded, more resolutely this time. “Okay.”

“Okay!" Teddy said happily. "Wait. Okay… what?”

Billy turned to face him, an apologetic look painted on his face. “We have to take the girl.”

Teddy’s brows knitted together. He said, slowly as if an accusation: “You like her.”

Billy grinned. “Jealous?” he had the audacity to bump his shoulder against Teddy’s, though in a manner lacking his usual vivacity.

“She belongs here, Billy," Teddy impatiently replied as he rolled his eyes.

"Does she?" Billy paused, letting the question hang in the air. "Think about it: a girl past the Mycogenian age of maturity with a full head of hair."

"It might have to do with whatever affliction she has," Teddy said. He knew it was a weak counterpoint; strong cultures like Mycogen would not take sickness as an excuse to break custom.

"Fair enough," Billy said generously, with a tilt of his head. "Then answer me this, dear friend: what girl enjoys free access to prison cells and why does she think the Foundation wants to kidnap her?"

Teddy stared at him, rummaging in his mind for some sort of rebuttal, any foothold, and found none. He shook his head in defeat.

“We have to take her. And I can give you two good reasons,” Billy said, dark eyes focusing for a moment.

“I’m listening.”

“The first and most urgent—" Billy raised a finger in emphasis "—is that she needs medical attention. There is something terribly wrong with her body.”

“What do you mean?” Teddy narrowed his eyes. “And how do you know?”

“I’m an old hand at this, First Foundationer,” Billy said, ignoring the insinuation and turning away to rest his head against the wall.

“So you can still read minds?”

"We don't read minds, Teddy." The Second Foundationer sighed and shook his head. “We cannot pluck thoughts out of heads, if that is what your Foundation believes, much less plant one. But we do see and manipulate emotions, though sparingly and only when absolutely necessary.”

“What you did to those farmers did not seem ‘sparing’.”

“But it was absolutely necessary.”

“Was it?”

Billy paused and let out a short chuckle. He shook his head. “I suppose not. It should not have happened. Manipulation of an Hamish mind is unforgivable and I have no doubt that the Table has already moved to impeach me.” He said the last part with a look of introspection, as if only to himself, eyes softening and falling to the ground.

Of course, Teddy didn’t understand any talk of a table, Hamishmen, and impeachment but contrary to his usual curiosity, he found himself indifferent to Billy’s enigma. Instead, he had caught on to a deeper revelation, only made visible by the glaring light of Billy’s unadulterated frankness. And that was what seized his breath and arrested all curiosity.

“Then why did you do it?” he asked softly, even though he already knew the answer.

“I saw you there, bleeding on the ground and I—” Billy’s dark eyes flicked up to meet his. He opened his mouth to say more and then, thinking better of it, pressed his lips closed again. Instead, he allowed himself a small smile and shrugged at Teddy.

 _Shit_.

Teddy let the silence stretch a little before clearing his throat. “Can you still read me?” he asked, breathily.

Billy closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the wall. “Never could." His voice, while weak, was steady and clear. "Your mind is a void, for some reason. There is simply nothing there.”

“Wow. Thanks.”

Billy laughed. And though it sounded feeble, it was a sweet and welcome sound in the dark. “What I mean is you are special too, like little Cassie. Though your peculiarity is of a different brand. So if you are worried about your confused feelings about—” he opened an eye and threw a sidelong glance at Teddy “— _this_ , reassure yourself that I know nothing of that thing that is not happening.” He raised an eyebrow and smirked. “Anyway, I would not worry too much about it if I were you; after all this, I will be—” Another pause. A longer, heavier quiet. He turned to Teddy with that sad wistful look in his eyes again.

“Billy. What do you—”

But the man of many secrets only shook his head. “From what little I could glimpse of her mind, the girl is broken. She is not consciously aware of her deformity but the distortion is pervasive enough that it corrupts even her mind. You saw her: fourteen and still a toddler. She needs help, Teddy. We cannot leave her here in good conscience.”

Teddy was quiet for a long moment, churning the information in his head even though he knew that they had already reached an agreement. "She might be able to help us with the search for the origin planet too," he conceded. "The word she used. 'Ghoulish'. It's very primitive. She had used a profoundly archaic word, one only the most dedicated of mythicists might have encountered."

"What does it mean?"

"The dead returned to life. Humans used to worship such a being, back when religion still afflicted the galaxy."

"An age now lost in the mists of antiquity," Billy said absently, reciting the famous phrase from memory as his eyelids drooped tiredly.

Teddy nodded in acknowledgment, though he was sure Billy didn't see it. They were quiet for a while and for a moment he thought that Billy might have fallen asleep. When he looked over and saw the ambassador's eyes still open, he reached out and placed a hand on Billy's forehead, feeling the immense heat that pooled there. “I thought your powers are muffled. How did you know about the girl?”

“They are. And so that brings me to the second and more compelling reason why we must take her with us,” Billy said, burying his face in his hands. “I can sense her mind only because it is reaching out to mine.”

“What are you saying?”

“Teddy, I am convinced that it was little Cassie who attacked us on Trantor.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I tried to format the introduction part but I don't know how *shrugs and smiles awkwardly* so if anyone has any suggestions, please share! :)
> 
> I always seek to improve my writing so do leave a comment, good or bad. Your thoughts, dear reader, are always welcome.
> 
> Talk to me on Tumblr!  
> http://kleos-aphthit0n.tumblr.com


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